| Name: John Damien Vaccacio
Age: 30
Occupation: Bond Broker
Died: September 11, 2001.
Killed at: World Trade Center
From city: New York
From state: N.Y. The following is from Newsday: John Damien Vaccacio wasn't one to play up his own accomplishments. An athlete who loved lacrosse and basketball, the 30-year-old vice president and bond broker at Cantor Fitzgerald thrived on competition. But he was modest to the point of self-effacement. "If he won, he was never a gloating winner," said his mother, Anne Marie Vaccacio of Merrick.
A study in contrasts, Vaccacio - whom everyone called Damien - was a jock who played the piano beautifully, a successful businessman who wrapped up leftovers from client dinners to give to the homeless man he often saw near his Upper East Side apartment.
One night, he came home from work to find a mouse in his apartment. An exterminator advised him to put down traps, but he didn't have the heart, his mother said. So Vaccacio and the mouse became roommates of a sort: When he came home, the mouse would scurry into the bedroom. When he went to bed, the rodent scooted out into the living room. They lived thus for a year, until he came home one day and found that the mouse had died.
Captain of the basketball team at Holy Trinity High School in Hicksville, Vaccacio was a looker, and he drove a slick, white Corvette. But that's not why he was popular, said his cousin and schoolmate, Marybeth Egan of Amityville. "He had so many friends, because he really did care about everyone," she said.
The white Corvette stayed in Merrick during Vaccacio's first few years at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. After graduating in 1993, Vaccacio returned to New York and became a bond broker, landing at Cantor Fitzgerald in 1997.
He was at work on the 105th floor of Tower One when he was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.
In addition to his mother, Vaccacio is survived by his father, James, and his brother, Christopher, of Wantagh. --Jennifer Smith (Newsday) |
