By KEITH GRANT
Gabrielle met the Forest Hills native during college at Buffalo State. Though she was a senior, she fell head over heels for the out-going freshman who had moved in one floor above her.
He was all about carpe diem,' living for today. That's why I fell in love with him. And he liked me! I thought oh my God!'
Over the years, she learned games like Dizzy Bats, in which the inebriated contestants try to run after spinning themselves in a circle around a baseball bat. They took part in dance marathons, traveled the California coast, and carried their own wedding reception on through the night, celebrating with their friends.
An avid surfer and guitar player, Stephen Hoffman showed people how to enjoy their lives. He also showed people how to use their lives to help others.
Not long after the Cantor Fitzgerald employee perished in the World Trade Center, letters poured in to the Hoffman home from friends reminiscing about Stephen. In a letter addressed to their five-year-old daughter Madeline, an old friend of Stephen's, Jim Kilkenny, wrote about a day some years ago when Stephen saw a kid come running into a store in Forest Hills. The kid looked scared and Stephen asked what was wrong. The boy had been mugged, he said, and was afraid to go back outside. So Hoffman walked him home. Before leaving the boy, Hoffman said to him, Ok, I took care of you, now you have to pass it on. You have to take care of someone else someday when they're in trouble.
Since Sept. 11, Gabrielle has seen endless acts of kindness towards her and Madeline. Much of it has its roots, it seems, in the fact that Stephen had taken care of so many different people in his 36 years. On Saturdays, he was routinely up at 6 a.m. to coach teenagers in a youth football league in Queens. He was more than a coach to them, though. He helped many troubled kids through tough times, even helping some to get into private schools.
At the field, he used to say to the kids be true to your family, be true to yourself, and do good in school. Then comes football.' That was his mark, Gabrielle said. He helped a lot of kids.
Stephen always saw the good in people, she said. That way of living brought an endless and diverse stream of friends into Stephen's life. After a memorial service in September, friends and family gathered on Lincoln Beach to throw rose peddles into the ocean that he had loved so much.
There were so many people there. Hundreds, Gabrielle said. And I didn't even know who half of them were. It was quite a tribute to his life.
In their Long Beach home, Gabrielle recalled how when they married 10 years ago, he said that when his body isn't there to love her anymore, my soul will continue to.
I'll see him again, she says. I believe this man will always be in my life.
Stephen Hoffman leaves behind a loving wife and child, his parents Jean and Thomas, and ten brothers and sisters.
He always found the good in people, Gabrielle added. I'll never have another friend like him.
