Anthony Edward Gallagher

Student of Teenage Culture
He called it his 4 o'clock conference call. It happened every Friday afternoon.

That was when Anthony Gallagher placed the call to the Adamses ‹ Katie, Liz and Jay. Sometimes Peter Adams might participate, but he was only 7. Mr. Gallagher would start off, "What's up?" and they'd go from there.

Mr. Gallagher, 41, an energy broker at Cantor Fitzgerald, handled a lot of important phone calls during his workdays, but none meant more to him than his weekly conference call to his nieces and nephews, the 15-year-old twins, Katie and Liz, and 13- year-old Jay.

Mr. Gallagher had only recently married, at the age of 40, and during his bachelor days he had cultivated a tight and unending relationship with the children of Suzanne Adams, one of his sisters. "He just loved them," said his other sister, Carolyn Gallagher. "When he was planning to get married, he even asked them if it was O.K. They gave him the thumbs up."

To stay in the loop, he knew he needed to be wired into teenage interests, so Mr. Gallagher faithfully watched MTV. "He would talk to them about Eminem and all that," Carolyn said.

And he did what they did. At a family barbecue at the Adams household over the Labor Day weekend, there was a contest to see who could make the biggest splash off the diving board of the pool. Mr. Gallagher was up there doing massive cannonballs.