He
Died Rescuing 'Josephine'
September
18, 2001
Laura
Desperito is desperately searching for a Josephine who survived
the World Trade Center disaster. She doesn't know who Josephine
is-or even her last name. But she wants to find out.
All
Desperito knows is that her husband, Andrew, a firefighter, saved
the
woman last Tuesday.
She
found out about the woman and her husband's heroism from Capt.
Kenny Erb of Engine Co. 1 when he arrived at her East Patchogue
home at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday to tell her that Andrew had died in
the disaster.
Now
Laura wants her three children- Nicole, 13, Anthony, 10 and David,
6 - to know about the woman their father saved.
"He
ordered his men out," Laura said. "He said, 'I'll be
just a few steps
behind you.' He just happened to be a few steps too close to the
building."
Andrew,
43, always wanted to be a firefighter. But he first became a police
officer in 1984 until he received his call of a lifetime from
the fire
department in 1987.
"He
was ecstatic," Laura recalled. "It was the best thing
that ever happened to him."
He
rose to the rank of lieutenant and worked at Engine No. 1 on 31st
Street in Chelsea.
Just
last month the family had spent nearly a week vacationing at Walt
Disney World. "It was like the best vacation we ever had,"
Laura said, noting that the children were a little older now than
when they had taken them on previous vacations and had more stamina
to stay in the park longer.
Laura
knew Andrew was the man she would marry shortly after they met
in 1979. "It didn't take me long because he always treated
me like a queen," Laura said.
They
married on Sept. 25, 1982, and would have celebrated their 19th
anniversary next week. The couple already had plans to vacation
in Hawaii and Las Vegas for their 25th anniversary in 2007, just
as they had done for their 10th anniversary.
Andrew
loved to cook. "People would say, 'Oh, Laura, this is the
best dish I ever had,' and I'd say, 'Tell my husband,'" she
said.
Last
Tuesday morning, Laura walked into a Sam's Club store and saw
everyone gathered around TV sets.
She
rushed home. "Everyone was calling to say, 'Oh, I think I
saw him [on
TV],'" Laura recalled.
She
finally reached the firehouse by telephone. "They said, 'Well
everybody made it back. We're hoping Andy's in the hospital,'"
she said.
That's
all she heard until the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
--Richard
J. Dalton, Jr. (Newsday)
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