Poet Was Also a Hero in '93 Attack

By Robert Fresco | STAFF WRITER

September 20, 2001

Eamon McEneaney led 63 people down 105 flights of stairs to safety in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Eight and a half years ago, in the first terrorist attack on the World

Trade Center, Eamon J. McEneaney led 63 people down 105 flights of stairs to safety, his wife, Bonnie, recalled.

This time, McEneaney didn't make it.

As soon as the first hijacked plane hit Tower One, he tried to call his wife at her office in Westchester County. Bonnie MacDonald McEneaney had not yet arrived. "He talked to my assistant ... and he said, 'Is Bonnie there?' He said, 'I love her, and I love the kids, and tell her I'm all right,'" his wife recalled. She has heard nothing from him since, and he is presumed dead.

McEneaney, 46, of New Canaan, Conn., was a senior vice president and limited partner with the brokerage firm of Cantor Fitzgerald.

Friends remember him as a hearty Irishman, athlete and poet. His wife recalled him as "the life of the party. He had that leprechaun spirit - that spark. And he was able to make a bad situation better. He didn't care about material things. He cared about people."

McEneaney also "had this way with words," his wife recalled. "I intend to publish a book of poems that he had written. Eamon was so humble. He had always wanted to publish, and now [his work] will be published posthumously," she said, fighting back tears.

A poem he wrote to his wife ends:

... the end

is a bend in the road

that we'll never find

a death I will always

defend

you from.

Bonnie McEneaney met her husband, who was born in Rockville Centre and grew up in Elmont, when they were both students at Cornell University. "There was a streaking," she said. "I met him in a bar. He was wearing a towel and I said, 'I like your outfit.'"

Eamon McEneaney had a distinguished athletic record in college. He was an All-American in lacrosse and All-Ivy League in football. He was also a member of the Cornell University Athletic Hall

of Fame.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by three sons: Brendan, 12, and twins, Kyle and Kevin, 6; a daughter, Jennifer, 8; his father, Edward, of Albany; brothers Blayney, of Miller Place, Kevin, of Manhattan, and Patrick, of Glastonbury, Conn.; and by sisters Laurie Wulforst, of Reno, Nev.; Susan Lum, of Arlington, Mass., and Maureen Eckman, of Purdys, N.Y.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday at the First Presbyterian Church of New Canaan.