Peter Allen Nelson

A Marriage Proposal
When Gigi Vega attended the funerals of Harry Ford and Brian Fahey, members of Rescue Company 4 who died in a Father's Day explosion in Astoria, Queens, she was deeply touched. Her boyfriend, Peter A. Nelson, also a member of Rescue 4, had been scheduled to work on Father's Day, and had the day off only because he had worked overtime the week before. It could have been him.

"So I asked him, 'Will you marry me, Peter?' " she said. Mr. Nelson had asked for her hand numerous times before, but she had demurred. They were married Aug. 22.

Gigi was already pregnant with the couple's first child when she proposed, and Mr. Nelson, 42, was a gleeful expectant father. "He talked to my belly every day. 'I love you, Lyndsi. Treat Mommy well today,' he would say. I had a very rough pregnancy."

On the night of Sept. 10, Rescue 4 called Mr. Nelson, who lived in Huntington Station, N.Y., to work overtime the next day, his day off

. Lyndsi was born three hours after her father's memorial service ended on Oct. 5. More than 20 days later, the rescuers found Mr. Nelson's body, and Lyndsi saw her father for the first time at his funeral.