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Always in the Know

Richard A. Aronow was always so eager to share the fact that his lunch buddies at the Port Authority, where he worked for more than 18 years, called him sensei, Japanese for teacher. "Whatever they knew, or thought they knew, he knew more," his wife, Laura Weinberg, recalled.

Among the things Mr. Aronow, 48, of Mahwah, N.J., knew a lot about was markets, whether it was the stock market or the intricacies of frequent-flier plans, and he was forever switching long-distance companies to find the best deal.

As a deputy chief of the agency's law department, Mr. Aronow worked on some huge legal deals ‹ most recently, the lease for the new $1.4 billion International Arrivals Terminal at Kennedy Airport ‹ and he knew the details of all the Port Authority's leases, documents so voluminous that they are called telephone books.

Mr. Aronow was considered a fair adversary; about 20 lawyers who had been on the opposing side of his deals attended his memorial service last month, his wife said.

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on October 19, 2001.