Tt post - sep 11, 2015

Jon Grabowski - A brilliant, humble, and generous computer programmer I knew in the late 1990s who lived and worked in Manhattan. Our company used software that was produced by Jon G's employer. I printed his C source code for study. He gave me his home phone number to call if we had issues. He didn't mind that I called him at home on a Sunday morning. At least he never seemed bothered. Always helpful. He visited us here in farm country, and we visited him in Manhattan.

In the late 1990s, Jon G worked at a company that was located a block or two from the World Trade Center. He would arrive at work around 10:00 a.m., which is not unusual for hackers.

Jon G started his new job only a week before the attacks, and since it was a new job, and since his new role was more management-like, he arrived at work early. His new employer, Marsh & McLennan, was located in the North Tower, which was the first tower struck. And the company occupied floors that were hit by the plane. Therefore, I assume that he was killed instantly.

At the time of the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001, the corporation held offices on eight floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, from 93 to 100. When American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the building, their offices spanned the entire impact zone, from floors 93 to 99. Everybody present in the offices at the time of the attack died, and the firm lost 295 employees and 63 contractors.

I lost touch with Jon G after 2000, and I did not know that he started a new job in the WTC.

Jon G's wife remembered that her husband had done a lot of work for us. She emailed us with the bad news.

---

http://www.legacy.com/Sept11/Story.aspx?PersonID=111386

JON GRABOWSKI
Jon GrabowskiWorld Trade Center

LOVE, PHILOSOPHY AND PLATO

It was a love story that began at a bagel shop in Maryland, over a conversation about Plato. Jon Grabowski, a student at the University of Maryland, managed to make sense of philosophy for the woman he later married, Erika Lutzner, a classmate and coworker at the bagel store, when her professors could not.

He was enigmatic, devilish, selfless "too smart for his own good," ‹ as she wrote in his eulogy ‹ and he could always make sense of the world, of himself, of her, she said. His friends and colleagues said that too, in interviews and memorial e-mails filled with recollections of his wry wit, helpfulness and deep love for his wife, a chef.

Mr. Grabowski, 33, was vice president for technology information at Marsh & McLennan, a job in the World Trade Center that he had begun only a week before the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

Mr. Grabowski and Ms. Lutzner were together for 12 years. He won her over during their second week of dating, when he brought her Tylenol and orange juice after she came down with the flu.

"I felt like we were one soul," she said. "Plato wrote about searching for your other half. Jon was my other half."

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on October 19, 2001.