Long Island remembers

About Kevin Szocik

This profile was originally published in 2001/2002

When Kevin Szocik played quarterback at Fordham University, he often took a pounding. Sometimes it was a knee, sometimes a shoulder. Once, he was hobbled in the first game of the season against the University of Maine and told that his season was over. But next game, he was taking snaps again, recalled his mother, Sheila Szocik. "He was a determined person. "

In fact, she said, it was remarkable, given his small-town upbringing in Lunenburg, Mass., that he was playing big-time college football at all, much less that he was named team captain in 1997, the year he graduated.

"He never let anyone set goals for him," she said. In high school, he was advised to look at Division III schools on the assumption that even if he made a Division I team, he would just languish on the bench. "He felt, even if he didn't play, he had to try to see if he could succeed," she said.

Nick Quartaro, offensive coordinator at the University of Kansas, was coach of the Fordham Rams during Szocik's football career. "Kevin was tremendously intense about what he was doing," Quartaro said. "You tell him something once, and he was able to produce that on the field. Some guys are vocal, some guys lead by example. Kevin did it both ways. "

Fordham also was where he met his future wife, Lorraine McNeill, who, along with her twin sister, was an athletic trainer for the sports teams. "We met in October of our freshman year and started dating in November," she recalled.

After graduation, McNeill moved back home to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and pursued her master's. Szocik got an apartment nine blocks away and went to work at the investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc. "He was part of our family for almost eight years," she said. They married in May 2001 at Gurney's Inn in Montauk. As Szocik bid farewell to guests on the receiving line, a friend stopped and told him that the young analyst had just made vice president. He was 26 years old.

The newlyweds honeymooned in Hawaii and settled in Garden City. Szocik focused his competitive spirit on the golf course, frequently teeing up with his brother-in-law, Brian McNeill of New Hyde Park.

On Sept. 11, after the first plane hit Tower One, Szocik called his mother. His building, the south tower, was undamaged, he assured her. Moments later, watching television, she saw the second jetliner smash into that building. Kevin called her again as he descended seven floors from his 89th floor office, telling her that he saw flames and smoke. He wasn't heard from again.

"Even after the second tower was hit, my husband and I said, 'If there's a way to get out, Kevin will find it. With his athletic ability and determination, we think he'll find a way to get out. ' "

In addition to his wife and mother, Szocik, 27, is survived by his father, Thomas; a sister, Lisa Szocik of Lunenberg, and a brother, Brendan, 23, of Brooklyn.

On Labor Day weekend, Kevin went on a family camping trip to a cabin in Maine. A game of horseshoes was organized: It was the old guys against the young guys. The old guys whipped the young guys, his mother recalled, and her husband was razzing Kevin. "You lost, you lost," he taunted. Kevin replied: "I never lose. Sometimes, I just run out of time. "

"Maybe that's what happened at the World Trade Center," she reflected. "He just ran out of time." -- Ken Schachter