Sheryl Lynn Rosenbaum

Doing What She Wanted
Sometime back, Sheryl Rosenbaum filled out an e-mail questionnaire, which her friends passed on to her mother, Bobbie Rosner, after her death. One answer stands out for Mrs. Rosner, who cannot speak of her daughter, the oldest of three children, without weeping.

What job would you want if you could have any one in the world? The one she had, wrote Mrs. Rosenbaum, 33, an accountant and partner at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Mrs. Rosenbaum followed her father into accounting, knowing since childhood, when she helped out in his office, that this was what she wanted to do. She met her husband, Mark, when both worked for Arthur Andersen. Last Monday would have been their seventh anniversary.

By the time Mrs. Rosenbaum decided to quit and start a family, she had made herself so valuable at Cantor Fitzgerald that her supervisors wouldn't hear of it. Instead, they changed her hours and permitted her a four-day week, so she could stay and have children -- Hannah, now 3, and Sam, 17 months. But even on the mommy track, her talents and diligence earned her bonuses and a partnership, her mother said.

But not at the expense of family and friends. The last weekend of her life was typical. One day was spent traveling from New Jersey, where the Rosenbaums were building a house, to Long Island, for the baby shower of her college roommate. The other was spent at a mall with her mother and 82-year-old grandmother, shopping for jeans and tops. "And laughing," her mother said. "We always laughed."