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Kermit C. Anderson: Walking Together

 

Kermit C. Anderson made the most of his lunch hour. Almost every day, for half an hour or so, he would descend from his 93rd floor office at the World Trade Center and walk, usually along the Hudson in Battery Park City, gazing out toward New Jersey. He loved places where the boundaries come together: city and river, humanity's creation and nature's.

Mr. Anderson, 57, a systems analyst at Marsh Inc., was a math major at Pennsylvania State University who married another Penn State math major, the former Jill Grashof. Together, the Andersons, who lived in Green Brook, N.J., walked for 36 years of married life.

Last year, for their 35th anniversary, they walked the mountains of British Columbia. Deposited every morning by helicopter with a guide, they would hike all day and arrive in the evening at a lodge in time for dinner and a soft bed.

"He probably would have camped, but for me he would stay in lodges with running water and lights," Mrs. Anderson said.

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times