Twenty-five years after Adam J. Lewis was killed in the World Trade Centre attacks, the Bridgeport school founded in his memory has grown from a 12-child preschool into an academy serving nearly 200 pupils from pre-kindergarten to eighth grade.
Each September, Lewis’s widow, Patty, welcomes pupils to Adam J. Lewis Academy with a soundtrack of 1980s music. The school was created to extend to children in Bridgeport the same life-changing educational opportunity that helped transform her husband’s own future.
Lewis grew up in a one-bedroom flat in the Bronx with his father before winning a sports scholarship to Manhattan’s prestigious Dalton School. He later attended Hamilton College, where he met Patty, and built a career at financial firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, based in the Twin Towers.
He was 36 when he died in the attacks on September 11, 2001. His daughter Caroline has described him as a devoted father who travelled between New York and Connecticut to remain closely involved in the lives of his four children.
Lewis believed education could level the playing field. Years after his death, Patty saw the need for that principle first-hand while working in admissions at a private school in Westport, Connecticut.
She interviewed children from neighbouring communities, including Bridgeport, and became concerned that many lacked the early academic foundations needed to succeed. Some were unable to secure places because they were not yet ready for the demands of the school.
The idea of creating a high-quality early-years programme took shape in 2011, when Patty and fellow educator Julie Mombello established the Adam J. Lewis Preschool. After two years spent finding a site and assembling a teaching team, the preschool opened in Bridgeport in 2013 with 12 pupils.
The school’s founding story says the programme was designed to give children from a range of backgrounds access to an enriched education, while helping to address inequalities that emerge before primary school. It has since expanded into an independent PreK3-to-eighth-grade school with a sliding-scale tuition model. ([ajlacademy.org](https://ajlacademy.org/founding-story/?utm_source=openai))
Support also came from Lewis’s former employer. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods funded the preschool playground, while Tom Michaud, a close friend and former colleague of Lewis who is now the firm’s chief executive, has continued to back the academy.
In 2018, the preschool expanded and reopened as Adam J. Lewis Academy, adding a kindergarten class and another year group annually. The academy has now reached its planned structure, with pupils enrolled through eighth grade during the 2026 school year. ([ajlacademy.org](https://ajlacademy.org/admissions/?utm_source=openai))
The school’s first eighth-grade cohort includes 12 pupils, several of whom have been there since pre-kindergarten. Staff are helping the students identify and apply to secondary schools for the next stage of their education.
For Caroline, the academy represents more than a memorial. She has said her father’s name lives on through the children being taught there, while the school gives practical form to his belief that opportunity can alter the course of a life.
“The story of 9/11 is not done being written,” Michaud told her. Twenty-five years after the attacks, she says the academy is continuing that story through each new class.
