Spirit of 'the Tank' is indestructible

Kevin Colbert would have celebrated his 35th birthday last month. He might have spent it the way he had most birthdays — going out to a nice restaurant for dinner with his mother and three brothers, possibly a girlfriend and a couple of buddies, sharing beers and laughs. He probably would have made some of his usual racy jokes and smiled his cat-that-swallowed-the-canary smile.

Colbert, who was sitting in his office on the 89th floor of World Trade Center 2 when United Flight 175 crashed into the building at 9:03 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, lives on in the hearts and minds of those who loved him. “My son had a larger-than-life personality,” said his mother, Susan Ainbinder Carroll. “The only thing bigger than his physical presence was his smile.”

At 6 feet 3 and 275 pounds, Colbert certainly had a physical presence. His buddies at West Hempstead High School, where he was a fullback on the Rams football team, nicknamed him “the Tank.” But despite his brawn, he was a gentle soul, according to his mother. He was not only her eldest son, but her best friend, her confidante, her soul mate. He stepped in to help raise his younger brothers when their father, like his own, “dropped the ball.” 

When Carroll divorced her second husband, Colbert and his brother Andrew secured a house in West Hempstead and brought their mother and two younger half-brothers up from Florida to live with them. “He put his whole personal life and everything else on hold to concentrate on helping set up not only financially, but an emotionally and physically safe environment for the kids and myself,” Carroll recalled. 

It didn’t end there. Colbert coached Little League, football and volleyball, attended parent-teacher conferences at his brothers’ schools and chaperoned class trips to Yankees games, even though he was a diehard Mets fan. He was 22 at the time.