9/11 widow transforms tragedy into educational opportunity for hundreds

Patty Lewis stands in the hallway of the Adam J. Lewis Academy each September as the school year begins, speaker in hand, blasting 1980s music to welcome students back. The school bears her late husband's name—Adam, who worked at the financial firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods in the Twin Towers and was killed on September 11, 2001. She has four children: Reilly, Sam, Sophie, and Caroline, who now works as a CBS News producer and tells this story.

Adam Lewis grew up in a one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx with his father, attending public schools in the neighborhood. His athletic ability earned him a scholarship to The Dalton School in Manhattan, a turning point that shaped his entire worldview. He came to believe that education was the ultimate equalizer—that regardless of where a child started, a strong foundation could level the playing field. He carried that conviction through Hamilton College, where he met Patty, and into his career in finance. He was a present father who commuted between New York and Connecticut, making sure his growing family felt seen and supported. For him, providing for them was inseparable from the opportunity education had given him.

A decade after his death, Patty returned to work in education, taking a position in admissions at a private school in Westport, Connecticut. She interviewed hundreds of children from surrounding towns, including Bridgeport, a lower-income community where public schools struggled. She watched capable students turned away because they lacked foundational skills. The gap troubled her. She began asking herself whether someone could build a high-quality early childhood program that would give these children what they needed to succeed. The question would not leave her.

She shared the idea with Julie Mombello, a former teacher and friend. Julie's first response was blunt: she thought Patty was crazy. But then she listened as Patty talked for six hours about how the right educational opportunity could transform a child's life—the way it had transformed Adam's. Something in that conviction landed. In 2011, The Adam J. Lewis Preschool was officially incorporated. Patty had an idea and a mission. What she needed was a building, permits, and staff.

The search took two years. She recruited teacher friends to join her. In 2013, the preschool opened in Bridgeport with twelve students. The response surprised everyone. Demand grew quickly, and so did support. Adam's former employer, KBW, became a crucial partner. When Patty reached out, they did not simply donate money—they sponsored the playground. Tom Michaud, Adam's close friend and colleague who is now CEO of KBW, has continued supporting the school since its founding.

By 2018, the preschool had expanded into the Adam J. Lewis Academy, serving students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. Today it enrolls nearly two hundred children. Patty has built something substantial in a community that needed it. When her daughter Caroline visits from New York, she finds herself astonished by what her mother has accomplished and the depth of the school's impact on the families it serves.

Adam Lewis's legacy lives in the school's name, but more than that, it lives in the children who walk through its doors each day—students who might otherwise have started school without the tools they needed. Twenty-five years after the attacks, as Tom Michaud observed, the story of 9/11 continues to be written. The Adam J. Lewis Academy is writing new chapters with every student who learns there, every family who finds opportunity, every child who discovers that education can indeed change everything.