A former air traffic controller with the California Air National Guard, and briefly a purchasing manager for United Airlines, who ran an industrial supply business with his wife of thirty-two years. He never held a pilot's licence but was fascinated by aircraft all his life. He was coming home from a business meeting in New Jersey.

Killed aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which came down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on the morning of 11 September 2001. The aircraft had left Newark forty-two minutes late, which is the only reason those aboard learned by telephone what had already happened in New York before theirs was taken. They had about thirty minutes. They voted, and they went forward at the cockpit door. The aircraft never reached what it was aimed at.