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JON GRABOWSKI: Love, Philosophy and Plato

 

It was a love story that began at a bagel shop in Maryland, over a conversation about Plato. Jon Grabowski, a student at the University of Maryland, managed to make sense of philosophy for the woman he later married, Erika Lutzner, a classmate and coworker at the bagel store, when her professors could not.

He was enigmatic, devilish, selfless "too smart for his own good," -- as she wrote in his eulogy -- and he could always make sense of the world, of himself, of her, she said. His friends and colleagues said that too, in interviews and memorial e-mails filled with recollections of his wry wit, helpfulness and deep love for his wife, a chef.

Mr. Grabowski, 33, was vice president for technology information at Marsh & McLennan, a job in the World Trade Center that he had begun only a week before the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

Mr. Grabowski and Ms. Lutzner were together for 12 years. He won her over during their second week of dating, when he brought her Tylenol and orange juice after she came down with the flu.

"I felt like we were one soul," she said. "Plato wrote about searching for your other half. Jon was my other half."

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times