University of North Carolina Athletics
Tar Heel Monthly: Kohart's Memory Honored With Scholarship - Part 2
May 14, 2002 | Men's Lacrosse
...CONTINUED
Working in New York City was always in Ryan Kohart's plan. He had interned on Wall Street on several occasions, and his father worked there as well. Within two weeks of graduation from Carolina he had a job as a junior equities trader, and he proceeded to get all the necessary licenses. After fulfilling the necessary requirements, he moved to an attractive job at Cantor Fitzgerald, where he worked in the North Tower of the World Trade Center every day.
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| Ryan Kohart on the lacrosse field at UNC. |
"The type of person who worked there was exactly who Ryan was," White said. "They were so driven professionally but also had so many outside interests. On the outside it would look like work came first, but really it was family and friends who came way before that. Everybody there was just what you would call your typical great guy."
658 of those lives perished on the morning of September 11. Ryan Kohart was one of them. Garden City lost 21 citizens, the most of any local community. Occasionally, Geoffrey Kohart sees a neighbor on his block riding his bike with his three sons. The neighbor's wife, who Kohart used to see regularly on the train into the city, died in the attacks.
Ryan's memorial service, like the hearts of those in the area, overflowed. The main floor of the Cathedral of Incarnation, which holds about 800 people, was packed. The basement level was filled to capacity. Estimates put the crowd at between 1300 and 1400 people. The staggering attendance represented less than a third of the lives lost on the 11th.
Almost immediately, the Kohart family began looking for a suitable memorial. White remembered a conversation she and her fianc? had had when planning their future.
"Everyone was asking me what Ryan's charity was and where they should donate, and we just thought the lacrosse scholarship would be a good idea," she said. "He had always wanted to give back something to Carolina because he had loved it so much, and he wanted to do that through a lacrosse scholarship."
A fund was established almost immediately. In their talks, Ryan and Melissa had always imagined it as a full scholarship. The initial goal was simply to fund a half-scholarship, which involved a still-daunting total of $75,000. In less than six months, the Ryan Kohart Memorial Scholarship Fund sprinted past the half-scholarship mark and now is nearing $120,000, just $30,000 away from Kohart's dream of being able to fund a scholarship for a lucky Tar Heel lacrosse player.
Donations have come from a variety of places. In lieu of giving wedding favors, one couple made a contribution to the scholarship and put notes on every table at their reception indicating their donation and the address where guests could follow suit.
"It has been very unique, as was the incident that spurred its creation," said Sue Walsh, the Educational Foundation's vice president for endowment. "Generally, when you do a memorial scholarship, you have a few individuals donate and you get up to a couple thousand dollars. It's amazing the different types of fund-raisers that have been held. Everyone in our office who has come in contact with the family has gotten great strength from their fortitude."
The lives of his family and friends go on, even while it sometimes seems that they, too, stopped on September 11. On May 11 in Garden City a memorial lacrosse game was held and Ryan's high school number was retired, the first number ever to be so honored by the school. Brett, who was spurred by the tragic events to follow his dream as a songwriter and musician, has played several benefit concerts with his band, Acquiesce. The group recently raised almost $10,000 for the scholarship fund with concerts in Chapel Hill.
Cantor Fitzgerald recently signed a lease on new office space on 57th Street in Manhattan, filling 80,000 square feet on five floors. Kohart's parents took a month-long trip to Florida this spring to decompress. His father has dramatically decreased the amount of time he spends at his downtown office, choosing instead to work more frequently from his home office. Family members have been tested for DNA so that recovery workers can attempt to match unidentified remains with Ryan's genetic characteristics. But even as they hope for a match in order to provide some closure, his father said that they have another image in mind, one that recalls that perfect day last summer on the island of Capri.
"The wind was blowing out toward the Atlantic that day," said Geoffrey Kohart, Sr. "With all the heat that was in that building, we have this image of Ryan and all the people he worked with just blowing out into the ocean."
Melissa White remembers September 11: "I work downtown at an investment bank and I was a stone's throw away from the towers. I was probably about 100 feet away. If you weren't there, it's hard to relive it for you. The media makes it seem gentle...You relive it every single day. It's a personal hell every day that I wake up and it's that much harder."
Kohart and White were to be married on September 7, 2002.
Adam Lucas can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com.
