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Debra Lynn Fischer Gibbon: A Dream of the Sea

 

Debra Lynn Fischer Gibbon was the kind of person who inspired confidence, even in strangers. Meeting her for the first time, Warren J. Mura, an executive vice president at Aon Corporation, immediately wanted to hire her. Months later, he succeeded in luring her from Wausau Insurance Companies, where -- a registered nurse -- she had worked for 17 years in the area of occupational health.

At Aon, Ms. Gibbon, a senior vice president, coordinated services for the company's top clients. "She was one of those people who would walk into a room, and you would listen to what they had to say," Mr. Mura said.

Divorced and the mother of three teenagers, Ms. Gibbon, 43, had a punishing schedule that included a 90-minute commute from Washington Township in Morris County, N.J. But she managed to attend her children's soccer and basketball games and sew her own curtains, said her sister, Karen Zaccaria-Cockrell. As a girl, Ms. Gibbon spent two weeks sailing on Lake Saranac in the Adirondacks, and had longed ever since to live by the sea, her sister said. "That was her dream," Ms. Zaccaria-Cockrell said. "To be on the water."

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times