'NO TROUBLE AT ALL'
People were always noticing that Glenn Perry was handsome, but he'd just shrug it off. His brothers had a different tactic: "We always told him he wasn't," said his older brother, Frank Perry Jr.
Lieutenant Perry, a 41-year-old city firefighter, had other noticeable qualities. A friend was getting his new house ready, and Lieutenant Perry offered to help him paint. When the friend showed up, he found that Lieutenant Perry had painted the entire house.
He had a small-town sensibility from growing up in a close family of five children. His father, Frank Perry Sr., a retired firefighter, and mother, Catherine, talk in tandem, even on the phone: "He was one big smile," his father said.
"Always laughing," his mother called out in the background.
"Always laughing. He was no trouble, no trouble at all."
In Eltingville, Staten Island, Lieutenant Perry met Peggy Riley; he married her in 1984. "I knew he would be a great dad because of all the attention he paid to my niece and nephews," Peggy Perry wrote in an e-mail message. "Glenn would think nothing of bringing six kids to Shop Rite with him. Glenn loved life."
The couple seemed destined for the sentence-finishing that defines lasting marriages. They had three children: Glenn Jr., Meaghan and Caitlin. "They were a very huggable family," Catherine Perry said.
"Very close," Frank Sr. interjected. "They've got his sense of humor."
"Yes, they've got their father's sense of humor," Catherine Perry added.
Profile shared from original published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on March 24, 2002.