Lt. Michael Russo, S,O.C. ” Motorcycles and Sailboats” ‘I’LL ALWAYS COME HOME’ If storybooks are written about the lives lived before Sept. 11, “Michael and Theresa” will make a good one. Lt. Michael Russo, 44, was a good-looking man assigned to the elite Squad 1 unit in Park Slope, Brooklyn. His wife, Theresa, is a nurse. Their child, Michael Jr., was born on the same day as his father. “A fireman and a nurse, it sounds like a big joke,” she said. “But I understood his life and he understood mine.” When asked to think back on their life together, Mrs. Russo talked about the time they sang together in the rain. The sails they took together on their little sailboat in the Long Island Sound. The motorcycle rides along the North Shore when the sun shone in their faces and they were happy and knew God had given them something wonderful. “I remember crab cakes and Corona beer and laughing and talking about the future and how good life was,” she said. She visited the wreckage of the World Trade Center the other evening for the first time. She looked at the smoldering pile and thought about what he once told her: “Don’t worry, I’ll always come home.” “Even the day after, I thought he would,” she explained. “I looked at the pile and I knew he was home.” Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on November 20, 2001.
