Rebecca Lee Koborie

Music and More Music

Rebecca Koborie's passion was music, whether she was singing in a musical, doing a cabaret act or leading a chorus. She did it all.

Ms. Koborie, who was 48, was an executive secretary for Marsh & McLennan in the World Trade Center.

"She really, really put her life into music," said her father, John Koborie. "She sang. She played piano. She started at 4 or 5, singing and dancing. At age 10, she made the Ted Mack 'Amateur Hour.'"

Ms. Koborie adored the spotlight but she was far from self-centered, her father said. She was kind-hearted, too, toward animals and people. She had a couple of cats she adored and one was hit by a car. Rather than follow the doctor's advice to euthanize the cat after it lost the use of a leg, Ms. Koborie decided to let it live on three legs.

"She was really a positive, positive person," said Dorothy Fox, a friend for more than 30 years. "She directed church choirs and her job was high-powered, high-strength. I never saw her terribly angry and I never saw her discouraged, really."

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 27, 2001.


Rebecca Koborie, 48, passion for music and helping

When Rebecca Lee Koborie commuted from Aberdeen to her New York City office, she frequently passed a homeless man with his young son camped out at the Port Authority bus terminal.

About once a week she would stop and hand the man a $20 bill.

Anthony Avalone, her husband at the time, chastised her gently and told her she might be better off giving the money to a formal charity, but his wife wouldn't listen.

"Anthony," he remembered her saying. "The government can't help everybody. These people need to eat."

Ms. Koborie's generous nature is one of the things family and friends said they remember most about the 48-year-old Guttenberg woman, who perished in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, where she worked as an executive secretary for Marsh Inc.

An accomplished pianist who performed for senior citizens and tutored schoolchildren in New York City, Ms. Koborie recently recorded her first CD featuring her original songs.

Both her father and her ex-husband said Ms. Koborie played for the sheer joy of it.

"She loved it, she did it on the side while she was working, singing at different restaurants," said her father, John Koborie of Sharon, Pa.

Avalone remembered some years ago, when they vacationed in Greece, his wife became friendly with a tavern owner who invited her back each night to play the piano. Her efforts earned her generous tips and a standing ovation.

"She asked me for a Baldwin piano instead of an engagement ring," Avalone said.

He and Ms. Koborie married in 1986. They divorced 14 years later.

Ms. Koborie was raised in Sharon, where she participated in musicals, choirs and theater productions at Sharon High School. She attended Indiana University in Pennsylvania and graduated from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music with a bachelor's degree in musical theater in 1977.

After graduation, Ms. Koborie took a job with the city of Cincinnati as a performer and eventually packed her belongings in a van with some friends and moved to New York City to pursue a theatrical career, her father said.

Ms. Koborie lived in Manhattan before moving to Aberdeen and then Guttenberg in 1999. She continued to perform as an actress and singer in summer stock productions and at restaurants. Though she was deaf in one ear and wore hearing aids, it never slowed her musical career, said her friends.

When her church, the Cross of Glory Lutheran Church in Aberdeen, was damaged by fire in 1997, Ms. Koborie and some friends held a fund-raising concert for its restoration.

"It was fantastic," remembered her father. "It was all Broadway music."

A memorial service for Ms. Koborie will be held at the church at 3 p.m. tomorrow.

Ms. Koborie is also survived by her mother, Julianne of Sharon; two brothers, Jay of Sharon, and Tim of Akron, Ohio; and a sister, Terri Roberts of Bangor, Maine.

Donations to begin a music program in her honor are being accepted at the Children's Specialized Hospital Foundation. Contributions can be made to the Rebecca Koborie Music Therapy Fund, 150 New Providence Road, Mountainside, N.J., 07092, or to animal shelters. Ms. Koborie, who had two cats, loved animals.