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Stephen Fogel, JD '89, Missing In Sept. 11 Terrorist Attack


             Stephen M. Fogel, a 1989 graduate of UM Law, was at work in his office on the 104th floor of New York's World Trade Center on September 11 when a hijacked plane hit his building. He is missing and presumed dead.

Vice president, assistant general counsel and assistant secretary of Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P., he was one of approximately 700 Cantor Fitzgerald employees lost in the terrorist attack that took the lives of nearly 3,000 persons at the World Trade Center.

At UM Law, he was an outstanding student, serving as articles and comments editor of the Law Review and graduating cum laude.

On the day before the attack, his wife said, he commented that "this was the happiest time of his life, that everything was so perfect right now."

Fogel always had a strong desire to pursue music, and he had played the guitar since junior high school. Over the past five years, he had taken lessons, played in a band, and set up a studio in his basement, from which he made some recordings.

"The house is so very quiet now," his wife said. "One of the things the children and I will miss most is the sound of Steve playing his music."

She did not receive a phone call from him on the day of the attack. "Usually, he would call me several times a day-when he arrived at work, during lunchtime, and intermittently throughout the day," she noted. She tried calling him at 8:50 a.m., but there was no answer. The first hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center at 8:45 a.m.

Fogel lived with his wife and their two young children in a suburb outside New York. Before joining Cantor Fitzgerald five years ago, he had worked with the New York law firm of Strook & Strook & Lavan and with a smaller brokerage firm.

The University of Miami Alumni Association has established a scholarship fund in his honor to provide educational scholarship support to children of victims who lost their lives in the air and on the ground during the September 11 tragedies. President Donna E. Shalala announced plans for the scholarship at an October 22 University of Miami reception in New York,

"Steve would have been touched by this, " said his widow, who attended the reception with their son.

Anyone wishing to make a contribution should make a check out to the Stephen Mark Fogel Memorial Endowed Scholarship Fund and send it to the University of Miami Alumni Association at P.O. Box 248002, Coral Gables, FL 33124. For further information, call 305-284-2872.