Allison Horstmann Jones

Made for the Great Outdoors

arry Jones grew up in Bernardsville, N.J., in a family that loved sports and the outdoors. After college, when he began dating Allison Horstmann, also from Bernardsville, he encouraged her to take up sports, too.

She did, with a vengeance. "I introduced this other world to her," he said, from his new home in Boulder, Colo., "and she just ran with it. She excelled with it, more than I did."

Biking, hiking, running, swimming — she eventually excelled in them all. She ran the New York Marathon. She skied with the Jones family in Sun Valley, Idaho. She completed triathlete competitions and intended, someday, to enter the Iron Man races. She and Mr. Jones — they married nearly five years ago — went wind-surfing and scuba diving in Belize.

They loved Boulder, one of the most intensely athletic cities in the country, but worked in New York because that's where the jobs were. Thirty-one and an analyst at Sandler O'Neill, she mountain-biked 30 miles one day shortly before her death.

"I'd be following her down a hill and hear her hooting and hollering," Mr. Jones said. "She kept on discovering new things about herself. She blessed me in a sense. Her drive to overcome adversities — I've taken that with me."