Every day she would scour the newspapers for mention of his name. Maybe it isn't true, she thought. Maybe he managed to get out.

        It wasn't until October, fully a month after the terrorist attacks, that Mary Ann Herrmann's worst fears were confirmed. James Robert Paul, her long-ago classmate at St. Henry District High School in Erlanger, did perish at the World Trade Center. But somehow, his name has gone virtually unmentioned in the crush of news coverage over the last year.

Paul

        For some friends and family, the lack of attention has made no difference; pain is pain, whether public or not.

        But for Ms. Herrmann, the silence felt all wrong, as if her friend had died once in life and again in the collective memory of his hometown.

        “I didn't know how to feel,” says the 58-year-old nurse, who lives in Florence. “I thought maybe the family didn't want it known or something. I thought maybe it was none of my business.”

        In truth, the Enquirer simply did not know about Mr. Paul, who earned a business degree from the University of Kentucky and a master's from Xavier.

        He was 58 and a vice president at Carr Futures, the brokerage firm, when he died in the attacks. He had been holding a meeting on the 92nd floor of the north tower.

        Mr. Paul hadn't lived in Greater Cincinnati for some 30 years. His parents, long-time Erlanger residents, died in 1984.

        He has one aunt remaining in Northern Kentucky, Sister Mary deLellis Bergen, an 83-year-old nun who teaches at Prince of Peace School in Covington.

        “He used to try to scare me and take me riding too fast in his convertible — my veil would fly,” Sister Bergen says. “He was a fun-loving person.”

        That's how everyone remembers Mr. Paul: funny, fast, larger-than-life.

        Girls loved him, Ms. Herrmann recalls. For Christmas one year, she received perfume from Mr. Paul, and an hour later, the same from one of his buddies. She soon learned the two rivals were bestowing gifts on several girls.

        “He was just so alive,” Ms. Herrmann says. “He always made people feel good.”

        Mr. Paul also embraced risk as a trader in commodities futures. He understood that with extreme highs in business come extreme lows, and he tolerated reversals of fortune that would have destroyed others, says his brother, Terry Paul.

        In 1984, Jim Paul was fired from his job at a brokerage firm in Chicago after losing big on a risky trade, his brother says. True to form, though, Mr. Paul bounced back, even writing a book, What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars.

        “He writes a book, for profit, about his loss adventure,” says Terry Paul, a Washington lobbyist and retired Marine brigadier general. “Only Jim would think of that.”

        In 1993, Mr. Paul moved from Chicago to New York with his wife, Pat Paul, and daughters, Monique and Danielle. Danielle is now a teacher in Tennessee; Monique is pursuing a doctorate in London.

        This May, some of the family attended a memorial golf outing at Summit Hills Country Club in Northern Kentucky, where the teenage Jim had worked as a caddy.

        Again, there was not a word in the media — but the outing was a success, says Debbie Fulkerson, development director at St. Henry District High School.

        So many golfers showed up that some had to be turned away, and the event raised $7,000 for the Jim Paul Memorial Scholarship Fund, which will help send St. Henry graduates to college.

        One of the golfers that day was Ralph Kemphaus of Groesbeck, who graduated from St. Henry with Mr. Paul. He's now reading his old friend's book, which opens with Mr. Paul's caddying days at Summit Hills.

        Jim Paul had a deep connection to Northern Kentucky and St. Henry, Mr. Kemphaus says.

        “Where he would have wanted his name remembered most,” he says, “is right back here, in his hometown.

        Donations can be made to the Jim Paul Memorial Scholarship Fund, 3755 Scheben Drive, Erlanger, KY 41018.

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