I did not know Brian Thomas Cummins. Although our time as undergraduates at CU Boulder overlapped, he was a senior when I was a freshman, to my knowledge our paths never crossed. Not even one time.
Brian Thomas Cummins,
University of Colorado, Boulder
(Finance 1986)
Brian was the fourth son of six boys, born in Somerville, New Jersey and raised in Belle Mead, New Jersey, a bucolic little piece of paradise located about ten minutes away from Princeton that the Kenny clan also called home for several years when I was a small child. Upon reading his brother Brendan's tribute to him, I immediately wished I had known him - even if just for a little while. I smiled reading Brendan's description of him, "He had quick, alert eyes that took you in with every conversation. He could immediately grasp situations for what they were. He had fun."
He loved to ski. He loved to surf. He loved what he did for a living and excelled at it. After he graduated from CU in 1986, he returned home to New Jersey and attained his MBA at Rutgers University. While he was in graduate school, he opened and operated The Lobster Trap restaurant in Belmar.
Brian transitioned from Belmar to Wall Street where he worked on the trading floor of the Exchange for Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette before he joined Cantor Fitzgerald.
He started at Cantor Fitzgerald as an Assistant Trader in 1993. On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, he was in Cantor Fitzgerald's offices on the 104th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in his position as an Equity Market Maker and a Partner. Back on February 26, 1993, when terrorists staged the first attack on the World Trade Center, he had also been at work and had survived. On September 11, 2001, tragically he did not.
If it is possible to achieve some measure of solace out of a deliberate murder of a loved one, then perhaps the Cummins family did when firefighters working "the Pile" at Ground Zero recovered Brian's body on October 30, 2001. He was buried next to his brother Patrick at Madonna Cemetery in Fort Lee, New Jersey on Saturday, November 3, 2001.
Brian Cummins never married. He was just thirty-eight when he died. His survivors included his parents, his four brothers, their four wives, and nine nephews and nieces.
In this piece, the final words about Brian Cummins belong, as they should, to Brendan Cummins:
He prodded and pushed you to do well and was the
first to help you out the second you needed it.
He was my big brother.
Some people might say
he burnt the candle at both ends -
and we're glad he did.
-AK
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