Michael J. McCabe

Unpretentious and Happy

It had been a golden summer.

After 18 years at Prudential Securities, Michael J. McCabe quit in June. He took a trading job at a Cantor Fitzgerald office near his Rumson, N.J., home so he could convert commuter time into family time. And he decided to take the summer off so he could spend it with his wife, Lynn, and their three children. There were lazy days at the Jersey Shore, barbecues, swimming. There was a glorious late-summer stay at a rented house in Provence with his best friend of 40 years and their wives.

He started work for Cantor at the World Trade Center exactly one week before the attack. The stint was supposed to last only a month or so, while the company completed work on its Shrewsbury, N.J., office.

Mr. McCabe, 42, was an unpretentious man with a ready laugh, happy in his own skin, his family and friends said. He was a big guy, strong enough to rescue several people over the years from the surf. "We sort of thought that if anybody could come out of this, Mike could," said his sister Mary Ellen McCabe.

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on October 12, 2001.


It was Michael J. McCabe's first week on the job.

After working 18 years at Prudential Securities in New York City, McCabe had just taken a position with the firm Cantor Fitzgerald. And while the firm was on the verge of opening an office in New Jersey, where the Rumson, N.J., resident could work, for the time being he was stationed at Cantor's offices on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center.

"My brother was a good friend, a great husband and a wonderful father," said McCabe's brother Nick. He was married and had three children, two girls and a boy.

Michael McCabe, 42, was born and bred in New Jersey and graduated from Rutgers University.

"We're right on the Jersey shore," Nick McCabe said. "He loved getting into the water and surfing. It was one of his biggest activities."

On Sunday, more than 3,000 people attended a memorial service for McCabe at the beach club. "It was a beautiful day to remember him by," Nick McCabe said.