Stuart Seid Louis

Sand-Dappled Memories

It was hot in Chinatown in the summer, so in 1955 Stuart Louis's mother bought a bungalow in Bradley Beach, N.J. Friday-night memories are salt-tinged for the Louis children, who rolled the car windows down as they sped along an hour's worth of highway toward the sea.

Other families from Chinatown followed, and soon there was a community where the grandmothers played mah-jongg all afternoon and the children grew up running along the sand together. Stuart Louis befriended a boy named Bobby Louie (their last names are written the same way in Chinese, and both mean thunder.) They were inseparable, said Mr. Louis's sister, Sylven Beck. He married Bobby's sister, Sharon, and Bobby was his best man.

Mr. Louis rose to become managing director at Sandler O'Neill, on the 104th floor of 2 World Trade Center. He and Sharon had two children, Kara and Evan. Mr. Louis, 43, would get home to East Brunswick, N.J., in time to attend parent-teacher conferences and to help Kara and Evan with their homework. "He made it fun," his wife said.

"He was more of a family man than most people," Gordon Russo, a former colleague, recalled. And family included the Yankees. When there was a ticker-tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes for his team, he slipped out of the office and stood on the sidewalk cheering, pennant in hand.