Robert John Ferris

Papa Bob at the Orphanage
While many men his age pondered retiring to Florida or hitting the links in Arizona, Robert J. Ferris considered buying a house near an orphanage in Haiti.

His wife of 38 years, Susanne, demurred. "I don't know if that would have worked out," she said.

To Mr. Ferris, 63, a family vacation meant packing Susanne and their three children into the family car and setting off for Columbus, Ohio, to visit relatives. If he wanted to support a local firehouse or church, he did not just open his checkbook: he went door to door in Garden City, N.Y., asking for donations.

Similarly, at Aon Corporation, where he was a senior vice president, he was just as likely to befriend a secretary as he was an executive.

Mr. Ferris went to Haiti after Hurricane Georges in 1998 to visit his son, Bob, a doctor in his first year out of medical school. Mr. Ferris volunteered at a nearby Roman Catholic orphanage, where the children called him Papa Bob.

Mr. Ferris's son went on to work in the intensive care unit at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan. He was on duty Sept. 11, and from the hospital saw smoke billowing from the first tower.

"Bobby, you won't believe what I'm seeing," Mr. Ferris told his son on the telephone.

Minutes later, the second plane hit. Mr. Ferris's son was one of the doctors waiting for ambulances that never arrived.