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Michael A. "Mike" Tanner

Michael A. "Mike" Tanner, the quarterback who helped lead the Cornell University Big Red football team to a winning record in 1979 and who led his high school football team to a New Jersey state parochial school championship, is among the victims of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center. He was 44.

Tanner, who earned a bachelor's degree in consumer economics from Cornell's College of Human Ecology in 1980, worked as an investment officer and trader for the securities firm Cantor Fitzgerald. The firm's offices were on the top floors of the World Trade Center. Eamon McEneaney '77, who was Tanner's teammate on the Cornell football team and who also worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, also is among the victims of the Sept. 11 attack.

At St. Joseph's High School in West New York, N.J., Tanner was named an all-state player in the parochial system and led his football team to the Parochial "B" state title.

"Mike had a cannon for an arm, and he was a hard runner who was built more like an offensive guard than a quarterback," said Don Fanelli '76, a long-time friend of Tanner's from both high school and college and a Chi Psi fraternity brother.

In his first year of eligibility to play varsity football at Cornell in 1976, Tanner played in six games under then-head coach George Seifert. After sitting out the 1978 season due to an injury, Tanner played in nine games in 1979, when the Big Red had a 5-4 record.

On Monday, Sept. 10, Tanner called Fanelli and offered his friend two New York Yankees tickets for Sept. 11 to celebrate Fanelli's wife's birthday. "We were supposed to meet Tuesday evening," Fanelli said. "You know the rest."

Tanner was the oldest of five children, and his own father had passed away during his senior year in high school. Fanelli said the death of Tanner's father "would help mold Mike into the unassuming, but powerful, leader that he was to become, initially on the field of athletic competition and later in the business world."

Tanner is survived by his mother, Mary Tanner; his wife, Michele; and his daughters, Sasha, 13, and Gianna, 3.