Born in Italy, raised in Brooklyn, an Army veteran of the Second World War who once owned a taxi and a pizzeria and retired after twenty years tending bar at the Palm restaurants in Manhattan. He was flying to California because his stepson had been killed and his daughter-in-law badly hurt in a car accident on their honeymoon.

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.