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Start of a Marriage

Scott Bart and Elizabeth Cappell conducted their courtship in a 96th-floor office at 1 World Trade Center.

He was an up-and-coming vice president at Marsh & McLennan, she a student teacher at the nearby High School for Leadership and Public Service. When school let out, Ms. Cappell would grade papers alongside her future husband so that work would not separate them.

Often, Mr. Bart read the books his fiancée was teaching so they could talk about them. And he tried to confine business trips to one day.

The couple set a wedding date for Aug. 4, planned a Mexican honeymoon and bought a house in Malverne, close to his family and hers. Mr. Bart, 28, loved carpentry projects, learned at his father's knee, and had already built a chest of drawers and sketched plans for a deck. Mrs. Bart, 24, got a job teaching English at a Long Island High School.

The Barts' wedding day was vintage Scott, Mrs. Bart said. He did not want friends to spend a fortune for hotel rooms. So he turned over their new house — Hotel Bart, they called it — to a score of celebrants, who slept on couches, in sleeping bags and on the floor of rooms as yet unfurnished. He also rented a yellow school bus to transport everyone from the church to the reception. "He made sure everything was taken care of," Mrs. Bart said.

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 2, 2001.