miss and love you lots. hmm.. a story, how about me crashing at Lindsay's (yes, Linz gave me her clothes and sneakers so we could hang the next day at like the pancake house, no joke!). Wish we could talk "life" in person but of course will take what I can get. love ya lots chica
- from nor, nor (as only you would call me)

Howard Kestenbaum was a really good man.  That may seem an ordinary epithet,  but Howard thought of himself as an ordinary man - an ordingary husband,  an ordinary father,  and an ordinary friend.  Love,  loyalty,  caring for others,  savoring each moment of life;  those were the things Howard felt everyone did.
-- from a Tribute

Westfield (Mass)’s bucolic setting may seem a world away from the urban chaos of lower Manhattan, but Harold Murphy said the 18 acres of woodland donated by neighbors is the ideal way to remember his brother.
“It was an idyllic place to grow up. As kids we always went down to the river to play and ride our bikes and go swimming and fish,” Harold Murphy said. “It was a place we’d always go when Brian was home on vacation.”
-- Harold Murphy via WBUR

She was thrilled to be accepted as a Big Sister in the BBBS-NY mentoring program in late August and was scheduled to have her first meeting with her Little Sister on September 15.
-- from Big Brothers Big Sisters of NYC

From the very beginning - when he accidentally fell on her at a party in the West Village - he made her laugh. He walked her home that night but, amusing or not, she wouldn't give him her phone number.
A few days later, however, she picked up the phone to hear someone say it was "Howie." Not recognizing his voice, she asked: "Howie who?"
"Fine, thank you, and how are you?" Howie Kestenbaum replied.
For 31 years of marriage, Howard and Granvilette Kestenbaum of Montclair talked every day, and he always made her laugh.
-- from "Lives Remembered," NJ.com

JUDY BRAM MET BRIAN MURPHY at a party in New York City in the spring of 1991. “We immediately had some kind of chemistry, connection,” she says. Brian asked for her phone number, but he didn’t write it down. “I thought, he’s not going to remember that,” she says with a smile.
-- from Brown Alumni Magazine

Linz,

I am getting married in a month. It pains me to think that you will not be there.

You would be the first one to get the crowd going on the dance floor, and you would be the last one dragged off of it. There is no one who could ever replace your spirit and energy.

I will miss you SO much that day - more than usual. As happy as I am to take this next step in my life, I can't help but be consumed by guilt: you never got to walk down the aisle and you never got to do so many things that we have all gone on to do. Kids and families and careers. It's just so unfair all of that got taken away from you.

I miss you and I love you and I wish you could be there May 3rd.

-- Lisa Knappen,

London, March 24, 2008

In the days that followed she tried to maintain hope as Brian’s family searched the city’s hospitals. At a gathering for Cantor families, she encountered a man who had been in the meeting with her husband and who’d survived because he’d left to greet clients in the lobby. “Nobody got out,” he said to her. That’s when she knew there was no hope.
-- Brown Alumni Magazine

i only know two people that died in the 9/11 attacks on the world trade center. one being my uncle johnny’s best friend brian murphy (i found something about him here), who i met when i was younger.
-- "remembering 9/11," blog post by "jackie" 

"Howard!" Judy Wein was yelling to Kestenbaum, her boss.
It was Vijay Paramsothy who called back: "We're over here!"
Paramsothy was sitting up, scratched and bloody. Marble slabs had fallen onto Richard Gabrielle and broken his legs. Wein tried to move the slabs with her good arm, and he cried out.
Howard Kestenbaum lay flat and still. To Wein, he looked peaceful.
Dead and wounded covered the floor of the lobby like a battlefield after cannon fire. A ghostly dusting of plaster lay over everyone.
-- USA Today,  "Inches decide life, death..."

My brother, Brian Joseph Murphy, never called late at night as a rule. Uncharacteristically, on Sept. 10, 2001, he called at about 10:30 p.m. to talk about “his girls.” He told me how Jessica had enjoyed her first day of kindergarten and how Leila was excited to start preschool the next day.

Had we known that this was the last time we would ever talk to Brian, what would we have said differently? Our family has always been close, but 9/11 has made us cherish the time we get to spend together.
-- Ann Murphy,   in MassLive

I was not forced to take this assignment. I could have deleted the
mass e-mail asking for volunteers to write an obituary. But guilt
pressured me to take it on. I was guilty of not having read a
newspaper in weeks and guilty of bad anthrax jokes. Above all, I
was guilty, as a non-United States citizen, of questioning whether
the United States had needed its power challenged.
-- Isolde Raftery,  Kestenbaum Obit writer for/in Columbia Spectator

Calling Brian’s cell phone repeatedly, it kept ringing with no answer. Calls to Verizon and friends in the communications industry could not activate the locator device precisely. Minutes stretched into hours as graphic and gruesome details were revealed.

Hopes were raised - and then dashed - as the hours turned into days with no information. Sleep was elusive.

Tragically, none of Brian’s remains were ever recovered.
-- Ann Murphy,  in Masslive (2011)

Kestenbaum epitomized the silent hero for those in his community.
He visited the sick from the synagogue, and he volunteered at a
homeless shelter. On one occasion, he helped a medical doctor, a
friend of his who lost the ability to speak, regain his ability to speak.
Nick Levitin, president of Beth Ahm Synagogue, recalls a
transitional time when the synagogue did not have a rabbi.
Kestenbaum assumed a spiritual role by leading the services.
"Howard stepped up as the spiritual leader then," Levitin said. But
Kestenbaum did not attempt to make the congregation believe that
he was the new rabbi, and he repeatedly reminded members of
Beth Ahm that he was simply there to fill a void.
-- from Columbia Spectator

In the moments before the second impact, everyone in the 78th floor sky lobby was poised between going up or down. Kelly Reyher, who worked on the 100th floor at Aon Corporation, stepped into a local elevator headed up. He wanted to get his Palm Pilot, figuring it might be a while before he could return to his office. Judy Wein and Gigi Singer, also both of Aon, debated whether to go back and get their pocketbooks from their 103rd floor office. But Howard L. Kestenbaum, their colleague, told them to forget about it. He would give them carfare home.
-- from NYT,  "102 minutes: Last words at the World Trade Center"

What How thought was that all those he loved were as ordinarily extraordinary as he.  Vijay Paramsothy from half way around the world, is what How thought all of us were,  another ordinarily extraordinary man.  On September 11th,  How gathered fellow workers from the 103rd floor in an effort to leave the building.  When after the second plane struck World Trade Center Howard fell,  and was perhaps unconscious.  Vijay Paramsothy,  still standing,  gently removed How's glasses,  put them in his pocket for safekeeping,  hoisted How to his feet and the last we know is that with Howard's arms around his neck,  Vijay fought to save them both.
--  from "Vijay and Howard"

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In memory of
Howard Kestenbaum '67
Brian Murphy '80
Lindsay Morehouse '00

 
 
 
 
 
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