Harvard's Sept. 11 Victims

David Alger ’66

David Alger ’66, whose approach to investing in stocks brought the mutual funds he managed to the top of the 1990s bull market, died in the collapse of the World Trade Center. He was 57.

As manager since 1995 of Fred Alger Management, Inc., he rejected the practice of value investing and its emphasis on underlying corporate values, instead relying on his own intricate analyses of future earnings potential. Under his leadership, the company went from managing $3 billion to $15 billion in assets and grew from 82 to 220 employees.

“He saw things that others didn’t,” said Don Phillips, managing director of Morningstar Inc., a Chicago firm that tracks the mutual fund industry, to the New York Times. “He produced spectacular results.”

Alger concentrated in history at Harvard and earned his M.B.A. from the University of Michigan.

He was survived by his wife Joesphine and daughters Roxanna Geffen and Cristina de Marigny Alger ’02.

Paul Ambrose

Paul Ambrose, a physician and a 2000 graduate of the School of Public Health (HSPH), died in the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon. He was 32.

Ambrose was a passenger on the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, scheduled to fly from Washington to Los Angeles, which was crashed into the military complex that morning.

After graduating from West Virginia’s Marshall University School of Medicine in 1995, Ambrose went on to work at the American Medical Student Association. There, he worked as the legislative affairs director before doing his residency in family medicine at Dartmouth Medical School from 1996 to 1999.

Ambrose attended HSPH from 1999 to 2000, concentrating on family and community health.

At the time of his death, Ambrose was working with the surgeon general and the secretary of health and human services. He was flying to Los Angeles to attend a conference on obesity issues.

Friends and colleagues describe Ambrose as a talented and caring doctor with a bright career in his future.

“Paul was a brilliant physician who was very sensitive,” Surgeon General David Satcher told the Washington Times. “He was an up-and-coming star in the area of public health. He was destined to be one of the great leaders.”

Mark Bavis

Mark Bavis, a former Harvard hockey assistant coach and scout for the Los Angeles Kings of the National Hockey League, died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. He was 31.

Bavis was a passenger aboard United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles, which was hijacked and steered into the second World Trade Center tower at 9:05 a.m.

Bavis served as an assistant coach for Harvard hockey from 1997 through 1999 under former head coach Ronn Tomassoni.

“Mark’s death hit home to a lot of people at Harvard,” said John Veneziano, assistant athletic director for media relations. Bavis also had strong local ties—he played hockey at Catholic Memorial High School in Boston and attended Boston University (BU), where he played four years of varsity hockey.

“We’re certainly deeply saddened by Mark’s passing,” said Jack Parker, head coach of the BU hockey team. “This is such an unbelievable and senselessly tragic event.”

Anthony Demas

Anthony Demas, a graduate of the Pratt Institute in New York and a 1980 graduate of the Harvard Business School, died in the terrorist attacks. He was 61.

Demas was a managing director of Aon Corporation, an insurance brokerage, for four years, and before that had been a managing director at Marsh & McLennan, where he worked for 31 years.

Colleagues described Demas as a dynamic, natural leader, a former first lieutenant in the Army and an expert in risk management who also had the most impressive collection of family photos in the office.

Demas’ wife Violetta said she’d heard from his secretary that he raced through the 105th floor office in the South Tower on Sept. 11, encouraging everybody to get out. “He would never leave anyone behind,” Violetta told the New York Times.

Steven Lawrence Glick

Steven Lawrence Glick, managing director with Credit Suisse First Boston, was at a financial technology seminar at the World Trade Center when killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. He was 42.

Glick, a 1989 Harvard Business School graduate, had taken the new job earlier that year to spend more time with his wife, Mari, a Broadway theater producer, and their two children.

At Greenwich Associates, the financial consulting firm where Glick worked for 10 years before joining Credit Suisse First Boston, former colleagues remembered him as driven, straightforward and not afraid to speak his mind.

Among family and friends, Glick was described as kind, cheerful and loyal.

“He didn’t need to be the center of attention,” friend Tom Stark told CNN.

Edward R. ‘Ted’ Hennessy Jr. ’88

Edward R. “Ted” Hennessy Jr. ’88, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, died when his plane was crashed into the World Trade Center in the terrorist attacks. He was 35.

Hennessy, a native of Belmont and a consultant for Emergence Consulting, was heading to Los Angeles on a business trip.

A resident of Leverett House while an undergraduate, Hennessy graduated from the College cum laude as a biology concentrator.

While a student at Harvard, Hennessy was very involved in the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. He played in the orchestra of the Pudding show during each of his four years at the College. He was also a co-writer of the Pudding’s 1989 show “Whiskey Business.”

“He was the kind of guy you always wanted to hang out with,” said Cori Fisher McRae ’88, who also played in the Pudding’s orchestra. “He was truly one of the best people I’ve ever known.”

After graduating from the College, Hennessy worked for a Cambridge technology company for several years and then attended Kellogg Business School at Northwestern University.

After graduation from business school, he entered the consulting field and moved back to Belmont.

Waleed Joseph Iskandar

Waleed Joseph Iskandar, a business strategy consultant at the Monitor Group in Cambridge, died when American Airlines Flight 11 was crashed into the World Trade Center. He was 34.

Born in Beirut, Iskandar graduated from Stanford University and moved to Boston in 1990 to begin his career at the Monitor Group. In 1993, he earned an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.

Iskandar went on to establish Monitor’s Istanbul office and helped run operations in Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Iskandar was a fluent French and Arabic speaker. He was a wine and food enthusiast who loved to travel and recently returned from a vacation in Greece—where Iskandar and his fiance, Nicolette Cavaleros of London, were to be married in July according to the Boston Herald.

Andrew ‘Andy’ Keith Kates

Andrew “Andy” Keith Kates, a chief administrative officer of Cantor Fitzgerald who helped manage one of the most complicated firms on Wall Street, died in the Sept. 11 attacks when the World Trade Center collapsed.

While Kates was described as a dedicated worker, his priorities were his family and friends. He was friendly and was described by his children to be “such a big kidder.”

Kates worked to organize his life so as to make “everything more fun, more exciting, for those around him,” friend Rick Tetzeli wrote in a personal tribute that appeared in Fortune.

When Kates was a student at Harvard Business School, friends say he gave out weekly joke awards. “Like the ‘Look, Ma, Two Hands!’ prize for someone who asked a professor a question and unabashedly answered it himself,” Tetzeli wrote. Kates earned his M.B.A. from the school in 1991.

Kates also worked persistently to get the job he wanted. In the spring of his senior year at Wesleyan University, the Bain consulting firm rejected his interview request. He immediately wrote back, telling them they would regret their mistake. “It ain’t over till it’s over,” he wrote, quoting Yogi Berra. He ultimately got the interview and a position.

Michael B. Packer ’76

Michael B. Packer ’76, an e-commerce entrepreneur who introduced a major Internet commerce project to the world’s largest brokerage house, died in the attacks on the World Trade Center. He was 45.

Packer, who was a managing director at Merrill Lynch, was delivering a keynote speech to an e-commerce conference on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower.

At Merrill Lynch, he headed the firm’s major effort at online trading, enabling customers to do business with the investment giant directly over the Internet for the first time. In 1999, Institutional Investor, a prominent trade publication, named him one of the country’s top leaders in online finance.

Science and technology were Packer’s areas of expertise during his undergraduate career. He concentrated in applied sciences and engineering at the College, graduating magna cum laude.

Though in his academic and professional life Packer specialized in highly technical subjects—such as his thesis on fluid dynamics—he felt at ease in the humanities and could easily explain his own work in layman’s words, said Ronald M. Soiefer ’75, a college friend.

“He roamed at will in my areas of expertise,” he said. “And yet the rest of us could step gingerly at best in his areas.”

Meta Waller

Meta Waller, special programs manager for the administrative assistant to the secretary of the Army, was killed at her Pentagon desk when the hijacked airliner slammed into the building on Sept 11. She was 60.

Waller grew up in Framingham, and received her undergraduate degree from Wayne State University and her master’s in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government in 1982.

Waller had strong interests in the civil rights movement, inspired by her two famous grandparents, Meta Warrick Fuller, a black sculptor, and Solomon Carter Fuller, the first black psychiatrist in the United States.

She was also a poet and gifted storyteller. Family trips to Martha’s Vineyard prompted Waller to create a series of science fiction stories about fellow ferry passengers from other planets who traveled to the Vineyard disguised as day-trippers.

“There, that one could be from Pluto,” she would say.

Relatives told the Washington Post they would find strength by remembering Waller’s resolve in the face of sorrow, including the death of her husband and daughter.

“This is a woman who has had a lot of tragedy in her life. But she went on. She continued to work—and she was successful,” said Carol Fuller, Waller’s sister-in-law.

Steven Weinstein

Steven Weinstein was at his desk at Marsh & McLennan on the 96th floor of the World Trade Center when the buildings were attacked on Sept. 11.

Weinstein’s bosses at Marsh said that even though he just started working at the company, he contributed immensely to projects and they found themselves complimenting him constantly with the remark, “Steve, we love you!!”

He previously had done information technology work for Monchik Webber, Citibank, Sapient and American International Group.

Weinstein, who received a master’s degree in computer science from Harvard in 1973, was admired for taking paternity leave—an unusual move for new fathers—to care for his wife, Ann while working at Citibank.

Friends and family also say they will remember the promises and creed he lived by. He was known to say, “Harm no one,” “work hard,” “enjoy New York” and “take time for nature...whether it be camping in the Adirondacks...strolling Shore Road in Brooklyn...gardening in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens,” according to a tribute posted on the Marsh & McLennan website.

—Compiled by Anat Maytal