Linda Sheehan: December 16, 1960 – September 11, 2001
In the early 1980s, there were few tougher fields for a woman to break into than the financial industry. That never fazed Linda Sheehan, a striking blond who grew up in Yorktown and graduated from Pace University. She began her career at Bear Stearns and in 1988, when a new firm called Sandler O’Neill & Partners was launched Sheehan, at 28, decided she wanted in. As the company took off, so did she, becoming a managing director on the equities desk.
“There aren’t many women in this male-dominated industry,” said Anastasia Rotheroe, who met Sheehan during college and later roomed with her on the West Side of Manhattan. “We became fast friends.”
A great conversationalist with an unmistakable laugh, it didn’t take Sheehan long to make friends. Leslie Richartz, a Sandler O’Neill principal, and Mary Marshall, a managing director at the company, began working with Sheehan when she joined the startup in October of 1988. They were immediately impressed by her work ethic; she’d be one of the first people in the office each morning and was conscientious in every task.
“She was a very professional, reliable person, but managed to bring an element of levity to an otherwise serious, stressful business,” Richartz said.
Dedicated to staying in shape, Sheehan would be at the gym by 5 a.m. each morning, then go straight to work.
“If you met her, you’d know that she was very into her physical appearance,” Rotheroe said.
An avid tennis enthusiast, she enjoyed both playing and watching the pros. Though she worked in Manhattan, she despised mass transit and was teased for taking cabs everywhere. Always fashionable, her love of shopping is well documented. Other interests ranged from film to wine-tasting to golf. Throughout her life she maintained a close relationship with her parents, going to Ireland with her father after her mother’s death.
In 1993, Sheehan was working on the 104th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center when a truck bomb went off below the North Tower. She walked down 104 flights of stairs, washed the soot off her face and that night went out with her coworkers.
Weeks later, at Rotheroe’s wedding in Chicago, people asked whether she was worried about working in the Twin Towers.
“She dismissed it as, ‘The buildings are too strong,’” Rotheroe recalls. “It really didn’t concern her.”
In the office, her looks and charisma led to a number of attempted setups with single friends of co-workers.
“Spend an hour with Linda and you’re bound to hear a great blind date story,” Marshall said. “She often said she would someday write a book on some of her more humorous blind dates.”
Getting ready to leave for work one Tuesday, Rotheroe had the morning news on her television when a horrific image came onto the screen; smoke was billowing from the Twin Towers. She grabbed her phone and called Sheehan’s home.
“I knew she was in the second tower,” Rotheroe remembers. “I was hoping that she didn’t go into work that day.”
As was the norm, Sheehan had been in her office by 8 a.m.
“She was a very warm-hearted person,” Rotheroe said. “She was a very good, loyal friend. She was the type of person that could definitely keep a secret.”
Sixty-six Sandler O’Neill principals and employees were killed on September 11th.
-By Andrew Vitelli
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.