Always On Watch Two: Project 2,996 9/11 Tribute: Anthony DiOnisio

Project, 2996: Remembering the Victims of 9/11

On this eighth anniversary of 9/11, I remember Anthony DiOnisio, Jr., vice president of operations at Cantor Fitzgerald, where he had worked since 1987. He worked at the World Trade Center in 1993, when the first attack occurred there.

Mr. DiOnisio perished at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Final services were held at St. Catherine's Roman Catholic Church on September 29, 2001.

From this page of the In Memoriam Online Network:

ANTHONY DIONISIO JR.: He Took Her Everywhere

The focus of Anthony Dionisio Jr.'s life was his 11-year-old daughter, Stephanie. "On the last day of school last June, he met her at school and surprised her with a trip to Disney World in Florida," said Lucille Dionisio, his mother.

Anthony"That was the kind of things he would do. He was her best buddy," Mrs. Dionisio said. "They were inseparable. They went everywhere together, Yankee Stadium, basketball games, ice-skating shows, racetracks."

Mr. Dionisio, a divorced father, had custody of Stephanie on weekdays, and her mother had custody on weekends.

"Stephanie held out until the very end," Mrs. Dionisio said of her granddaughter's reaction to Mr. Dionisio's presence in the World Trade Center. "She said, `I am not worried. Dad will make it out.' When we planned for a memorial service, we had to sit her down and talk her through it."

Mr. Dionisio, 38, quit college and worked his way up to become the vice president for operations at Cantor Fitzgerald. "We are Catholics, so we believe he is in a good place now. He will be our guardian angel," said his mother. After the tragedy, she put her son's picture on the wall, and every morning when there is school, the granddaughter says, "Good morning, Dad," and the grandmother says, "Good morning, Anthony. We are going to school now."

Read more about Mr. DiOnisio at Remember September 11, 2001.

Legacy.com shows Mr. DiOnisio's guest-book page still intermittently active, the most recent entry on his birthday, July 31. He is not forgotten!

Based on my research on Anthony DiOnisio, I believe that he would want his family to remember him in the following way, as expressed by Henry Scott Holland:

Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

Anthony DiOnisio, Jr., still lives — in the hearts of those who loved him in this life and in God's presence in the next life.

Death, be not proud!