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A Husband Who Opened the World for Her
By Indrani Sen
STAFF WRITER
December 27, 2001
Before she got together with her husband, Barrington Young, the world was a daunting place for Margaret FosterYoung.
"I had never traveled outside the United States," she said. "I had never done a lot of things. I had never even taken the subway into Manhattan to hang out, until I was with Barry."
Together, the couple explored Hawaii and Cancun. Knowing she loved the novels of Ernest Hemingway, Young took her last year to Key West, where the author had lived. And they had planned a Caribbean cruise in November.
Closer to home, Young, 35, and FosterYoung, 32, of Rosedale, walked the length and breadth of Manhattan together. "We used to just walk, walk, walk because we had so much to talk about," said FosterYoung.
But since Young, a senior analyst in the telecommunications department at EuroBrokers, was lost from his office on the 84th floor of Tower Two, FosterYoung has found herself daunted once again.
"I actually got over a lot of fears being with him," she said. "Now, I'm afraid to go to Manhattan all over again ... Every street, every corner, reminds me of Barry."
Since junior high school, Young had been a fixture in her life, FosterYoung said, first as her friend Grace's older brother, then as part of the same gang of friends in Laurelton, which has a close-knit Jehovah's Witnesses community.
It was only as adults, however, that they came together as a couple. It happened one night in 1993, when the two were out dancing with friends.
"People kept asking me to dance, and I just grabbed Barry and said, 'You're going to be my dance partner for the rest of the night,'" FosterYoung recalled. "And he said, 'How about the rest of our lives?'"
"I just laughed," she said, but "after that night, we drew closer and closer."
They were married in 1995.
Young became her confidant, her adviser, her protector, his wife said. "He was a very good listener," she said. "If you vented two hours straight, he would just sit there and take in every word ... He wasn't judgmental, he wasn't condescending. Just that Rock of Gibraltar."
After her father died of cancer this summer, she said, "I had this sense of comfort in knowing that even after my father was gone, he'd be there. My teddy bear."
In August, the couple had begun planning to start a family. Young had an 11-year-old son by a previous marriage, Barrington Jaleel Young. "B.J. was Barry's heart," FosterYoung said. "He adored B.J." Young was convinced his next child would be a girl, his wife said, and the couple had even decided on a name, Kayla Shanell.
But Young was determined that parenthood would not cramp their style when it came to traveling and exploring, his wife said. "He said, 'Even then, we're not going to stay home. We're going to pack her up and take her with us.'"
On the morning of Sept. 11, FosterYoung believes that her husband, a member of his office's fire safety team, helped others escape the building, sending them ahead of him. "In my heart of hearts, I know that's what he was doing," she said.
Young had tried to become a firefighter when he was younger but was disqualified because of a bad knee. When his wife confessed that she was relieved that he wasn't doing such a dangerous job, he just laughed at her jitters.
"He said, 'You just can't be so afraid of everything. You have to live life and enjoy it.'"
Copyright © 2001, Newsday, Inc.