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Harvey Joseph Gardner III: Built From Scratch

 

For his career, Harvey Gardner chose the computer lab over the kitchen, but both places fostered his creativity. He was a tinkerer, someone who built computers from stray parts and, evidently, built dinners the same way. Mr. Gardner, 35, did all the cooking for himself and his younger brother Mark, with whom he lived in Spring Lake, N.J. But the recipes were gleaned from the air.

"They were all his own concoctions," said another brother, Anthony, who is the founder of the WTC United Family Group (www.wtcunitedfamilygroup.org), an information network for families of the victims of Sept. 11. "It was crazy stuff. But it was good."

A practitioner of martial arts and a devotee of the History Channel, Mr. Gardner was a computer consultant for General Telecom on the 83rd floor of 1 World Trade Center.

"Mark managed to get through to him at the trade center that morning," Anthony Gardner said. "And Mark heard him comforting others, telling them it was O.K. He was being his normal, level-headed self."

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times