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Trailing 2 Little Boys

Even as a boy growing up on Staten Island, Paul Barbaro was always taking care of other people. He would shovel the snow off a neighbor's driveway free of charge and would often stay up late into the night to comfort an ailing grandmother, said his father, Nicholas.

Mr. Barbaro, 35, was a soft-spoken man and a perfectionist, whether he was painting his parents' kitchen or labeling moving cartons. An hour-and-a-half drive with Mr. Barbaro could take three hours. "He would have to pull over at every scenic lookout," said Daniel Macri, a friend since high school. "He had to be a pain in the neck a little bit."

Mr. Barbaro, a software engineer, designed trading platforms for some of the biggest companies on Wall Street. In December, he joined eSpeed, a division of Cantor Fitzgerald, and in August, he and his wife, Kim, moved from Staten Island to Holmdel, N.J. When he worked around the house, his sons, Paul William, 5, and Joseph Nicholas, 2 1/2, would trail after him wearing toy tool belts. "Anything he did, they were right behind him," said Mr. Barbaro's brother, Nicholas Jr.

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on October 23, 2001.