"One day we were at a busy intersection in Brooklyn," Nancy Niedermeyer recalled. "An elderly gentleman tried to get across the street but he was disoriented. Al stopped the car, got out and helped him across."
That was the moment she decided that Alfonse J. Niedermeyer III, all 6-foot-4, 220 pounds of him, was somebody she could marry.
Mr. Niedermeyer, 40, was a Port Authority police officer, a big man with a booming New York accent who was a genuine hero even before he rushed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. In 1992, he received a special citation for rescuing passengers from a US Airways jet that skidded off a runway at LaGuardia Airport.
Robert A. Fischer, a retired Port Authority police officer who worked with Mr. Niedermeyer for 16 years, called him "a born rescuer." He made friends quickly and kept them for a long time, said Kevin R. Quinn, who met Mr. Niedermeyer in the sixth grade.
Profile shared from original published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 1, 2001.