Matthew Horning
At an office Christmas party in 1999, Matthew Horning told a colleague he had two goals: improving at guitar and finding someone to love.
In January he started taking guitar lessons. In August he met Maura Landry, who also lived in Hoboken, N.J.
“Hi,” he called down the table at a Mexican restaurant where mutual friends had gathered. “We’re neighbors.”
In the following months, Mr. Horning’s grin grew into what his family called the “Maura smile.” He started getting sappy, observed his sister, Dana.
A database administrator for Marsh & McLennan, Mr. Horning, 26, aspired to write a fantasy novel or a comic book. His dreams were simple and sincere. “We didn’t have to live in the biggest house on the street, but the people inside had to be happy,” said Ms. Landry, 24.
Though not yet engaged, the couple were planning a life together. She wanted four children; he talked her down to three. He wanted her to walk down the aisle to the “Star Wars” theme. She said, “We’ll see.”
Mark Rothenberg
Well known within the New York showrooms during the Fall Tabletop Market, former owner of Culver Industries, Mark “Mickey” Rothenberg, was on the United Airlines Flight 93 when it was hijacked by terrorists and crashed in Pennsylvania.
Rothenberg’s plan was to get to San Francisco to then make his way to Taiwan to purchase glassware and stemware. Mark began his employment with Culver owners, his father and uncle, in 1970 and became owner in the late 1980’s when his father passed away. Rothenberg went on to open up a consulting firm called MDR Global Resources in Westfield, NY after selling Culver Industries.
Rothenberg was remembered as a man who made an excellent father and had an admiration for golf and traveling by his colleagues at tabletop industry where he spent more than 20 years.
James Walsh
When Kathleen Walsh Karlen adopted her son Connor from Korea — a 2-year-old who found the transition from East to West sometimes unbearable — it was his Uncle Jim who could calm Connor’s emotional storms. No one in the family was surprised. Jim Walsh was the fun uncle, the friend everyone wanted to hang with, the nice guy with the big heart who was never afraid to show it, said another sister, Carol Walsh Murphy. “I’m sure everyone who was lost at the World Trade Center has somebody who says they are a great guy, but to call Jimmy great sells him short,” Murphy said. “He was fun and funny, and at the same time, he taught us all how to be a little more loving.”
James Walsh, 37, didn’t make one last call to his family from the 104th floor of One World Trade Center, where he worked as a computer programmer for Cantor Fitzgerald, but his family said it didn’t matter, “because he said ‘I love you’ every way possible, every day of the year.” He said it in the way he read books every night to his daughter, Caroline, who turned 2 the day the Twin Towers crashed to earth. When news came that the Scotch Plains resident was missing, boys he knew in high school in Westfield and people who remembered him from King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., called to help.
Sean McDonough, from Montgomery, Pa., recalled him in an e-mail: “. . . His friends in Pennsylvania and around the country have been warmed by his presence and will miss him terribly . . . He loved being a dad and through his relationship with Caroline, he showed me a way to be a better parent with my kids. “We are left with the void of the thousands of people like Jim Walsh who died last week,” McDonough added. “but I will tell everyone who listens about my friend Jim and how much he meant to me and my life.”
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Walsh is survived by his wife, Kate; his parents, Frank and Mary Lou of Spring Lake; two brothers, Thomas of Westfield and Peter of Spring Lake; and two sisters, Kathleen Walsh Karlen of Woodbridge, Va., and Carol Walsh Murphy of Tampa, Fla.