The son of Irish immigrants, raised in Manhattan, who served four years aboard a Navy destroyer during the Korean War. He took an engineering degree at New York University and a master's in computer science at Rutgers. He described reaching the summit of a hard trail as a spiritual thing. He was flying to hike in Yosemite with his old friend William Cashman.

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.