William H. Pohlmann

Living Every Day as the Last
The night William H. Pohlmann met Linda Fata in a bar at Rockefeller Center in April 1973, he told her he just knew they would end up married. They did, seven months later. The children came quickly: Craig, now 27, Christopher, 26, and Darren, 23.

But Mr. Pohlmann, who was born in the Bronx, also sensed that he would die young. "He was devastated by his father's death when he was 15, and always thought he wasn't going to get much time with his own children," Mrs. Pohlmann said.

And so, Mr. Pohlmann lived every day as if it were his last. He coached his children in Little League baseball and in soccer. He helped them with homework. He worked hard, but played harder. He was funny and, his wife said, when he drank, even funnier. He liked to have big family dinners and backyard barbecues with neighbors and friends.

At 56, he was still a volunteer firefighter and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve. Mr. Pohlmann, a lawyer, worked as an assistant deputy commissioner for the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance in the trade center. But his real love was politics. He was a perennial Republican candidate in Ardsley, N.Y., where he lived for 28 years. He lost every time.

"It was very difficult for him to lose," Mrs. Pohlmann said. "But what can you do? He always kept going."