Grace Galante

One to Take Charge

Frank Susca remembers playing on his block with about 20 other children when his sister Grace would get upset about something. "She could simply say, `I don't want to play,' and obviously, being her older brother I'm like, `All right, so you go away.' And when she left, everyone left with her. She had that kind of draw with people. She was feisty and really smart." Feisty enough to turn him into a "General Hospital" fan, he said, because she would win any arguments over which channel to watch.

As an adult, Grace Galante, 29, a broker's assistant at Cantor Fitzgerald, would be the one to create a first-birthday party, complete with a giant Barney, for her nephew, Francesco, or to take her father to his appointments when he had cancer. "She always had everybody's back," Mr. Susca said. "I promised her, at least to myself, from now on, I can't be selfish in what I do," he said. "I want to try to keep part of her in me by living the way she would like, and sharing stuff with her that she's not able to see anymore." Her husband, John Galante, said she loved spending time with her parents and his. "Just that alone was good enough for us," he said. "Everything about her was special."