Remembering a Zealous Advocate of Lower Manhattan When the ribbon is cut next year to open Lower Manhattan's new subway hub at the Fulton Center, one figure will be conspicuously absent from the crowd: Elizabeth H. Berger, the president of the Downtown Alliance, who died on Aug. 5, at 53, after a decade with pancreatic cancer. Her advocacy of Lower Manhattan was so zealous that even close friends were fooled into believing her remission might never end. There were few projects she did not influence. These included the Fulton Center, over the juncture of nine subway lines at Broadway and Fulton Street, which was criticized for its generous public space and $1.4 billion price tag. Ms. Berger expressed no such reservations. "This is our Grand Central Terminal," she told me in our last interview, June 5, sitting outside the Financier Patisserie on Cedar Street. It's long overdue. It'll make a real difference in leasing. People need to see a thing, and this is a powerful thing. It'll be, "Meet me at Fulton Center." I remember the Biltmore clock. This is going to be a destination - a defining one - for Lower Manhattan. Typical of her approach, Ms. Berger saw things from both regional and local perspectives. She said young, midlevel managers were "trading in a suburban lifestyle" and choosing to live in an urban belt that stretches from western Brooklyn to the river towns of New Jersey, with Lower Manhattan naturally at the center. Her belief in downtown as a round-the-clock community began with her own household. "She moved in to Gold Street in 1983," her husband, Frederick Kaufman, said, "and for the rest of her life, never moved above Fulton." The two met in 1978, standing in line as freshmen at Yale to sign up for an English course. They became fast friends. She wound up working as Mayor Edward I. Koch's assistant representative to the City Council. Mr. Kaufman came to New York to be a writer and found himself sleeping in a closet. Ms. Berger offered him a room in her Gold Street apartment. Bowing to what was becoming the inevitable, the two had their first real date on Valentine's Day 1984. And you know what happens when you go out with your landlady, Mr. Kaufman said. One date, and you're living together. Gordon J. Davis, Mayor Koch's first parks commissioner, was by then a senior partner in the law firm Lord Day & Lord, Barrett Smith. He was looking for someone to guide the firm's practice in governmental relations (or lobbying, to use a blunter word). "Lizzie had this incredible reservoir of optimistic energy, combined with the fact that she was smart as a whip," Mr. Davis recalled. Her love of the city was evident, too. "It was like opening a music box and it was playing, "New York, New York,'" he said. The job was hers about 45 minutes into the meeting. Ms. Berger and Mr. Kaufman were wed in 1991. Two years later, they moved farther downtown, to Maiden Lane. Their daughter, Phoebe, was born in 1996; their son, Julian, in 1999. On Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, moments after dropping Phoebe off at Public School 234, Ms. Berger watched, thunderstruck, with other parents in the courtyard as a Boeing 767 roared over their heads and into the World Trade Center. She rushed back to claim her daughter, then called Mr. Kaufman, at home with Julian. She told him to get out and meet her at City Hall. The family escaped on foot. No sooner had their lives started to return to normal in 2003 than Ms. Berger began to feel persistent itchiness. A specialist in infectious disease arrived quickly at a dismaying diagnosis: the problem stemmed from a tumor on Ms. Berger's pancreas. "Lizzie used to call herself the luckiest unlucky person in the world," Mr. Kaufman said. The early detection of the tumor made her eligible for an invasive surgical procedure. Though complications included six weeks in a coma, Ms. Berger emerged with a decade added to her life. When the presidency of the Downtown Alliance, which runs the Lower Manhattan business improvement district, opened in 2007, Ms. Berger campaigned for the job with brio. The board was won over. "She broke the mold," said Janno Lieber, the president of World Trade Center Properties, a Koch administration alumnus and a board member. She was a community activist who actually valued business. And she valued transportation. "She was one of the leading supporters of the Fulton Center project," said Michael Horodniceanu, the president of capital construction at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. And she valued education. Antonio Pérez, the president of the Borough of Manhattan Community College, said Ms. Berger constantly pressed officials to rebuild Fiterman Hall, a college building that was irreparably damaged on Sept. "She perceived the college as a valuable part of the community," Dr. Pérez said. That seemed to be the key. As an advocate for the whole of downtown, Ms. Berger was often able to surmount the narrower issues dividing her constituents by appealing to their common interest in the district. That's not to say she didn't have favorites. When nurses at Bellevue Hospital Center learned that Ms. Berger's birthday was Aug. 3, they told Mr. Kaufman they wanted to bake a cake. He relayed the offer to his wife, who was by then largely incommunicative. Long minutes passed, Mr. Kaufman recalled. "Then she opened her eyes, looked at me and said, "Financier.'"