Craig Damian Lilore

Nothing Stood in His Way

Buy a preposterously depleted house and revitalize it in your spare time? Why bother? But that was Craig Lilore.

Mr. Lilore, 30, who worked in institutional sales at Cantor Fitzgerald, believed that nothing was beyond him. "If you wanted to get him to do something, you just told him that he couldn't do it," said his father, Ralph Lilore. So a few years ago he found this house in Lyndhurst, N.J. "It could only be charitably described as a handyman's special," his father said. "I looked at it and said, `Oh, Craig, this is a two-year job, and not for one person.' "

It was a two-year job, and basically for one person -- Craig Lilore. Sure, he relied here and there on a specialist, but he essentially did almost all of it himself. He had no training in the trades of home building. Yet he had an intuitive knack that enabled him to figure out almost anything. His wife, Caroline, was duly amazed.

Challenges were his thing. Though he always knew he was going to work on Wall Street and graduated from college with a finance degree, he got a law degree as well. Then he took the New York and New Jersey bar exams back to back, and passed both.

"He was an expert skier," his father said. "He started to scare me when he began talking about doing this helicopter drop into a remote area you can't get to except from the air. But that was Craig."

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on October 18, 2001.


Craig Lilore, 30, devoted father and friend

In between the various handyman projects he did around the house, his hours as a stock trader and all the time he spent with his new family, Craig Lilore bought a motorboat last year, a 20-foot Sunbird.

But he never got around to naming it.

"I know what we'll name it now," said Rick Doren, Mr. Lilore's brother-in-law. "'Craiger,' I always called him Craiger."

Mr. Lilore, 30, worked as an institutional stock trader with Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower when the first hijacked airliner struck the building on Sept. 11.

To be sure, Mr. Lilore was a man of many talents.

He and his wife, Caroline, bought a house in Lyndhurst two years ago that could charitably be called a fixer-upper. With the help of his friends, Mr. Lilore put a lot of work into it, including a large deck in which he took special pride.

His friends say he played a pretty good game of golf, too, shooting a 79 on the last round he played in early September. In high school, he was co-captain of the varsity football team and played varsity baseball at the Montclair Kimberley Academy.

And Mr. Lilore was a smart guy, graduating magna cum laude from Seton Hall University in 1995 with a bachelor's degree in finance. He earned his law degree from New York Law School in 1998 and was a member of the New York and New Jersey bars.

But, according to friends and family, his impressive résumé was an afterthought to a personality that was always positive and friendly. They spoke of his love for his family and his son, Joseph Craig, born four months ago.

"Everybody you talk to would say the same thing: he was always pleasant, always upbeat. I'm not just saying that. He really was," said Carolynn Cedola, Mr. Lilore's mother-in-law.

"If we went out tonight with him and he had never met you, but you were just a friend of mine, by the end of the night, you two would be buddies," Doren said. "That's the way he was."

Doren said he and Mr. Lilore spent a lot of time together, be it the regular runs to Home Depot or the annual trips to the Super Bowl -- although last year they went to Las Vegas instead. The two had plans for more expeditions with their families in the future.

"We had talked about doing things with our sons, taking them to the Super Bowl when they were bigger," Doren said. "I'm going to miss him. I miss him already."

In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Lilore is survived by his parents, Marianne and Ralph T. Lilore of Montville; two brothers, Anthony of New York City, and Frank of Montville; a sister, Monica Paganessi of Mahwah; and his grandmother, Emily Lilore of Glen Ridge.

Visiting hours will be from 2-4 p.m. and 7-9 p.m. tomorrow at the Nazare Memorial Home, 403 Ridge Road, Lyndhurst. The funeral will be at 10 a.m. Thursday at St. Michael's Church in Lyndhurst. Interment will be at Holy Cross Cemetery in North Arlington.

In lieu of flowers or gifts, a memorial fund has been established for Mr. Lilore's son. Donations may be made to the Craig D. Lilore Memorial Trust, c/o Ralph T. Lilore, 1425 Broad St., Clifton, N.J. 07013.