Jeffrey Coale - 2996 Tribute

I kept meaning to post up my 2996 tribute from last year, but of course forgot this morning. Then I received this comment from Jeffrey Coale's sister, Leslie, which just absolutely made my day:

I am Jeffrey's sister. Thank you so much for sharing his life with so many people. It seems that the world has forgotten the tragedy of 6 years ago. I am heartened by your blog and the comments posted in response. Thank you.



Intro borrowed from Kami, who said it so eloquently:

Back in July, Dale got an idea to have one blogger each cover each of the victims of 9/11. (No matter how you feel about what happened that day, these people were indeed victims.) He set out to get 2,996 bloggers to cover all of the victims, and he exceeded his goal. I am honored to be a part of his project.

Imagine having this view as your workplace.

That’s what Jeffrey Coale saw each day when he went to work as Assistant Wine Master at Windows on the World, the restaurant that occupied the 107^th floor of the North Tower, One World Trade Center. A job where he had taken a huge reduction in income in order to further his dream of owning a restaurant.

He lost his life on September 11^th at the age of 31.

Jeffrey’s dream to own a restaurant began in college. He took training in cooking and restaurant management. Those skills help, as does money. And so he went at it methodically: working for a number of years as a very successful government bond trader, while at night, he attended classes at the French Culinary Institute.

After some time he quit trading and took a job as an apprentice chef at the Louis XV restaurant in Monte Carlo. Next, he returned to New York to work at the Alain Ducasse restaurant. Wanting to refine his understanding of the wine side of the business, he then took a job as an assistant wine master at Windows on the World.

"He left really good money to make $10 an hour at Windows," said Leslie Brown, his sister. "But Jeff never settled for something. He followed his passion."

On visits to his parents' home, he would sometimes cook a special meal.

"He would send me out for all these special ingredients," his mother Joan said, "and he would make fun of my old pots and pans and utensils." Her son had become such an expert chef, she said, that "I would cook family favorites for him sometimes, and I'd get nervous and burn things."

From A Tribute to my Brother by his sister Leslie Coale Brown

”He had a generous heart, a kind soul and a creative intelligence. He has friends around the world. And if you were Jeff’s friend you were special. While he was never mean, Jeff didn’t waste his time with people who weren’t genuine. Jeff rarely did anything he didn’t want to do; I think this is why he was able to experience so much in life, because he was not motivated by guilt or peer pressure. He didn’t waste time feeling bad.”

“And the only sense I can make of why Jeffrey’s life would be called so short is because of the effect it will have on so many people. He touched many lives and my hope is that now because of knowing and losing Jeff your lives will be different. Maybe someone here now won’t be afraid to dream big, maybe someone will realize how short life is and start living it differently. Maybe you will change jobs, or appreciate your family more. Each of us has a responsibility to live life with a little more passion and joy in honor of a life cut short. Try to be the person Jeff knew you were capable of being.”

His mother, Joan Coale had given her son a special gift of her own shortly before Jeffrey’s death: her mother's diamond ring. It was intended for his companion, Margaret Rosenblatt, with whom he lived in Greenwich Village. "He was waiting for a special time to give it to her."

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Earlier this year, a number of former Windows on the World staff opened Colors, a co-operative restaurant in Manhattan that serves as a tribute to their fallen colleagues and whose menu reflects the diversity of the former Windows' staff.

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Having Jeffrey Coale’s name assigned to me was quite moving and apropos on a number of levels. This project of researching his life reiterated my feelings to truly urge everyone to follow their passions and dreams. Oftentimes life can be short and you really must make the most of it.

Within weeks of Jeffrey’s death several surviving coworkers had followed his ‘lead’ and left unsatisfying relationships and/or jobs. I only hope that those who read this and may be in similar positions will gather some strength from this.

For your viewing pleasure....

Meg's school has a "Mr. Foothill" contest each year. This is one of the performances.

I seriously have to give this kid credit. He did an awesome job. Be sure to catch the end.

Great.....

While doing the paperwork to pick up our rental car in San Diego, the clerk asks us why we're visiting. Just being chit-chatty. We tell him we're going to visit SDSU. He then says "Oh, yeah. We've got alot of people working here who used to go there"

FABULOUS!

All I can think of is my kid working at a rent-a-car joint after 4 years of college.

Decisions

So, guess what? Last week Megan lost her virginity!



Airplane travel virginity that is! I know, everybody who hears this can’t believe it, but seriously, none of our kids have ever been on a plane. When you’ve got 3 or 4 kids depending upon the circumstances it gets pricey to do air travel vacations.

Anyhow, it’s getting down to crunch time in our household as far as deciding where Megan’s going to college next year. She’s been so busy with sports and other activities that we hadn’t ever gone to visit campuses. We figured we’d do that once we knew where she was accepted.

One of the final 3 schools is San Diego State. I’ve been to San Diego once as a small child so it was actually really nice to visit and I’d recommend it easily to anyone visiting California. It’s just beautiful.



We visited some of the local touristy areas and attractions and also visited the school. The size of it initially really put us both off. (There are about 36,000 students there). When we went for the official tour and presentation on the second day it became obvious it was a lot more manageable that we originally thought just walking/driving around the campus.

Today she went with her dad to go visit Cal State Chico, which, despite it’s reputation as a huge party school, has an excellent liberal arts/teaching program (what she wants to do).

My personal choice, for many reasons - not only that she’ll be closer to home, is for her to go to St. Mary’s college. It is just half an hour or so away from our house, but she’d live on campus. It’s a much smaller school, just 2500 students and unlike a lot of the state schools, the average class size is 20, virtually all classes are taught by professors and not grad students. I personally think she’d do better in a smaller environment.

So we have to wait and talk about all the options over the weekend and then decide. I will do my best to not be my pushy self and hold things in check.

Oh, and here’s my $.02 on private vs. public schools from this experience. If your child is interested in a private school, even though they’re more expensive, I’d encourage applying. Many of these schools have much more endowment/scholarship money to distribute to students that what the state/public colleges and universities have to work with. Megan got an awesome honors scholarship/financial award package to St. Mary’s which would let her go there for less that what we’d pay for either of the state schools.

Just tell 'em the other guy looked worse...

On Saturday Jessica and Brandon were fighting playing roughousing (there's a Mom word, if I ever heard one). At some point she pulls up her knee and nails him in the face.



Let me tell you, one starts to feel self-conscious taking a kid into a store with that bruise on his face. I'm a bit glad that they're out on Spring Break right now, so he's not going to school looking like that.

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We had a nice Easter. I made Brandon get dressed up as a trial run for a big party we have to go to in June. He looked so adorable. But still managed to dig in dirt. Typical.



And just in case you didn't know, boys can make guns out of anything!