He is among the missing.
Scauso graduated from Commack South High School and worked his way through aeronautical
school in Daytona Beach, Fla. He was a bartender, a construction
worker and a mechanic, among other jobs, until he became a pilot.
He flew for Ozark Airlines and TWA, but it was difficult to find steady work.
So he moved around the country piloting chartered flights where
he could.
Eventually, he returned to Long Island to his parents' home in Commack while
he became a firefighter.
It was then that Janlyn's father fell ill. She returned home to tend to her father
for several months. Scauso noticed her Monte Carlo SS had been
damaged in an accident. He decided he would work on it for free.
He fixed the car and married her.
His wife remembers a husband who loved his four children, Darcie, 13, Donny,
12, Gabrielle, 6, and Juliette, 4, and who loved to fix things,
who liked to have as many people as possible around the dinner
table and who cared for animals.
Last year he was helping build an extension on the family's Dix Hills home and
noticed a dozen salamanders crawling around in a pool of tar. He
gingerly picked the tiny creatures out of the goop and cleaned
them. He called a friend who works at the Bronx Zoo for advice
about where to set them free.
His wife last spoke to her husband on Sept. 11, before the buildings collapsed. "I said to him like I do every time, 'You're my everything, the air I breathe and the reason I wake up in the morning.' He said, 'Right back at ya.'
"And that was the last time I talked to him."
A wake will be held today from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Huntington Manor Fire House, 1650 New York Ave., in Huntington Station. A memorial service will be held tomorrow at 11 a.m. at St. Elizabeth's Roman Catholic Church, 175 Wolf Hill Rd., in Melville.
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