Arthur, Arlene, Lynne and Mario

Reflecting on the events of September 11, 2001, Dean James Pain of Drew University, a former teacher and mentor of mine, asked: "How do you think the unthinkable or speak the unspeakable...We are living," he said, "in a shattered moment, a moment which will continue to be shattering."

Indeed, seven and a half weeks later, we remain shattered...shocked, stunned and saddened beyond belief. We have witnessed unspeakable evil committed by obscenely evil people. We still feel grief, anger, fear...shaken to the very core of our being...as we continue to think the unthinkable, and to speak the unspeakable.

He didn’t know it when he left for work at Marsh and McLennan that fateful Tuesday morning, typically much earlier than he had to, but Wayne was leaving for the front lines of a new kind of war in which the old rules of engagement no longer applied. We’re hearing a lot about heroes of the World Trade Center...police, firefighters, emergency personnel, and rightly so. But Wayne is a hero too, a hero who died for all that is good and right and true, just as surely and as certainly as if he were engaged in hand to hand combat.

So many of those who died that day were among the brightest and the best, and Wayne was one of the very brightest and the very best. A graduate of the prestigious Stern School of Business at New York University, he spent his entire career with Marsh and McLennan, or the companies that were merged to form it. To December 7, 1941, which some of us here today remember having lived through and experienced, we can add September 11, 2001, as a day which will live in infamy.

Wayne was a quiet and unassuming man...the kind of man who supported a child in Africa for years without anyone but himself, and the child who benefited from his kindness, knowing about it...the kind of man who would donate blood several times a year, again, without anyone knowing it...the kind of man who was always available, for a cousin or a friend who needed a companion to go to a concert at the last moment, for friends who were getting married in Ecuador and wanted him to be present, for his Dad, to make "just one more drop of campaign literature" before an election. As his Uncle Anthony put it, "he didn’t know the word ‘no!’”

His travels took him, literally to the far corners of the globe...to China, Russia, all over Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, Ecuador, and Italy where, in a remote village, quite by chance, he met descendants of his grandparents and immediately related to them as if he had known them all his life. Indeed, he spent part of September 10th planning, with his father, a return visit to that village in October.

A week prior to that, he returned from a trip to India. A traveling companion, a part of the small group on that trip, who hadn’t known him before, on learning he was missing, wrote to Arlene and Arthur and Lynne, that she "felt she had known him much longer than a week...He made a good impression on me," she wrote..."A lot of qualities shown through right away - his absolute honesty, his warmth and generosity toward other people, his deep concern for the impoverished people of India. I just took to him right away," she said, adding, "how could anyone not?" How indeed?

As wide as his interests were, the center of his life, was his home and family...his parents, Arthur and Arlene, his sister and closest friend, Lynne, and more recently Lynne’s husband, Mario, who he claimed as a brother. And how he looked forward to being "a real Uncle" after being an honorary Uncle to the children of cousins and friends.

But this was the focal group of a much larger circle of Uncles and Aunts and cousins whose closeness and love and respect and support for each other is extraordinary. It was from this close knit family that Wayne reached out to countless others. As Arthur put it, "Once you were a friend of Wayne’s, you were a friend for life." "He was," he said, "a man of honor...intensely loyal...and his word was his bond."

Sports and music were other interests in Wayne’s many-faceted life. A little leaguer as a youngster, he played a mean second base and short stop. Later, as an adult, he became a "black belt" in karate. He bowled in an extremely competitive league. And he was an avid fan of the New York Giants and the Yankees, spending the Saturday before 9/11 at Yankee Stadium watching the Yankees play the Red Sox, enjoying the home run by Tino Martinez and the win. Again, it was a family event, with his Uncle Alan and Aunt Ginny there as well.

Wayne was not only a performer of music, playing the drums in a group with childhood friends Brian and Lito, but he was a student of music as well, with an encyclopedic knowledge of music history and a collection of hundreds (if not thousands) of records, tapes and CDs. Going to concerts and shows, frequently with cousins and friends, was a favorite pastime.

Wayne Russo was truly, a remarkable young man...with interests as wide as the world, enhanced by sports and music, but always grounded by family and friends. Whatever he did, he did it with eagerness, enthusiasm and enjoyment. He died, much too soon. But if there is one consolation, it is that he lived a life that was fulfilled and filled full in ways that few ever attain.

In the chaos and confusion that immediately followed the destruction of the World Trade Center, a young woman was interviewed on TV. She had been searching for her missing fiancé. "And where is my friend, Wayne Russo?" she asked at the end of the interview. "Where is my friend Wayne Russo?"

That was our question too, and it continues to be our question.

Where is our son, where is our brother, where is our nephew, where is our cousin, where is our friend, Wayne Russo? The only answer that comes to me is that of the angel to Mary Magdalene on the first Easter Day when she came looking for Jesus. "He is not here. He is Risen!" Wayne is not there in the devastation we know as "Ground Zero." He is risen...to be in the closer presence of Almighty God.

And he will be with us too, to live forever in countless memories of all that he was, all that he achieved, and all that he sought to be. He will be with us in a myriad of ways...some will bring a smile, others a tear, but always with love and affection and gratitude for his time among us.

Shortly after 9/11, Lynne asked her brother to send her a sign that he did not suffer. By chance, she picked up something Wayne had written several years ago regarding their very ill cat, Bret. She was dying in front of their eyes at the animal hospital. They decided to put her to sleep, as she would not make it through the night. Wayne wrote, "It was quick and painless and humane. It was the right thing to do. I hope I go out like that some day." Wayne Russo’s demise was undoubtedly swift, but certainly not humane.

That’s what hurts so much. Not only was Wayne and thousands of others cheated out of their promising future, but we were too. To say that it makes us angry is an understatement. We want him here, with us, to hug him, love him, to blink the lights when the music gets too loud. But knowing Wayne, as we do, we know that he would not want the circumstances of his death to consume us.

I don’t know whether Wayne ever knew of the late Fr. Henri Nouwen. But I am sure he would have agreed with him when he wrote that two deadly words in the spiritual life are "there" and "later". Instead, Nouwen challenged us to live "here" and "now". I think Wayne would urge us to do the same, with the same zest, the same enthusiasm, the same energy with which he lived life in the here and now.

I do know that Wayne knew of Paul McCartney and could probably write a book about him and the Beatles. Although he probably hadn’t read these recent words, I think he would have concurred. If he could go back in time and meet, the 12-year-old Paul McCartney, "what advice would you give Him?," McCartney was asked.

"Oh, my God," McCartney replied. "What would I tell him? Keep a good sense of humor, man. You’re going to need it...And enjoy yourself. Because, you know, we don’t know how long we’re here for. We don’t know the deal, really. And so I think if you enjoy, it certainly helps. I think it helps people around you too. It helps them to enjoy."

I think Wayne would have agreed with that, because he truly enjoyed everything he did. He lived life, savored it so much that we enjoyed it too, just being around him.

And McCartney is right. We don’t really know the deal, at least we don’t know all the details. But we do have a faith, a faith, as the liturgy puts it so well, that "at death, life is not ended, but merely changed." That is our prayer for Wayne, that for him, life is not ended, but merely changed.

And if he could, I’m sure Wayne would echo those words of Jesus and say to us today, "peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you...let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid."

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