Joseph J. Pycior, Jr.

Aviation Warfare Systems Operator First Class, United States Navy.

For as long as his parents could remember he had wanted the Navy. There was an organisation in Carlstadt called the Naval Brigade for children of eight and nine and up - blue uniforms in winter and white in summer, tailored small, meeting every week in a building they called their ship, run by Navy rules. He was in it.

He and his wife Terri were both in the Naval Junior ROTC at Becton Regional High School, where they met; he was company commander in his last year and went into the Navy as soon as he graduated in June 1980. His father, a Navy veteran of Korea, said: both my sons were interested in the service.

He served aboard the George Washington and the Seattle and in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm, and came to the Pentagon in early 1999, where he compiled the information for press conferences. His father said: I felt he was at the safest place in the world - the nerve centre of the whole armed forces.

He was a Cub Scout den leader. His wife said: he's happy, outgoing, funny, he loves children, everyone he works with loves him, and he's the perfect dad and husband.

That morning he telephoned home and spoke to his ten-year-old son about New York, and rang his mother-in-law to tell her to go outside and look. She could see the smoke.

He was about to finish a degree in history, and had put in his retirement papers. They meant to move back to New Jersey in January.

Killed at the Pentagon on the morning of 11 September 2001, when American Airlines flight 77 struck the western face of the building at 9:37. A hundred and twenty-five people inside and fifty-nine aboard the aircraft were killed.

His wife Terri, his sons Joseph the third and Robert, and his parents Joseph and Arlene.