Former Canes exec, family still mourn loss of son-in-law

As a former U.S. Ambassador to Denmark, Jim Cain had prepared for possible attacks overseas. He went everywhere with body guards and he never expected such a devastating attack would happen to his family.

“I had great training in counterterrorism and all those things that didn’t matter at all in the end because I never expected, and no one would, to be this close,” said Cain.

Cain’s daughter, Cameron, lost her husband, Alex Pinczowski, in the March Brussels attacks.

The family only found out about the secret marriage in the midst of the search for Pinczowski and his sister, Sascha. Cain said that while trying to arrange a last-minute flight to Brussels, his daughter pulled him close and confided that she had secretly married Pinczowski in a ceremony in New York in October 2013.

“It’s the first time I ever really cried with my daughter,” he said. “Under the circumstances, it was an incredible thing and made me so happy and filled with joy. If they had told me a month earlier, I don’t know what my response would have been, but it was wonderful and beautiful; searching for a husband, a son.”

Pinczowski and his sister were Dutch nationals who had been living in the United States. Pinczowski was on the phone with his mother in Holland at the time of the attacks.

Pinczoaski, 29, had traveled to Holland to work on a craft-related business that he and Cameron Cain were going to start together. The couple had met in 2010 while taking summer courses in Durham.

“Now it is just trying to understand how best to support [Cameron’s] grief, her needs, her sorrow and dealing with the lost hopes and happiness she was looking forward to in her life with Alex,” Jim Cain said.