Ruben Correa: Happy in His
Home
He
would start in at 10 in the morning, pestering the men of
Engine Company 74 on the Upper West Side for a chance to
rule the kitchen for a day. "How 'bout I make some fat
boys tonight?" Ruben Correa would say, promising
steak-and-cheese hoagies that would make them cry for
more. The other firemen say that when they sat down to
eat, Firefighter Correa, 44, always watched them dig in
before taking his first bite, making sure they liked what
he had cooked.
The only place that the big former marine liked more
than his firehouse was his home. He scrimped and saved
and even sold his car to come up with enough money to
move his wife, Susan, and their three girls into their
own house in Staten Island two years ago. It made for a
long commute to the Upper West Side, but it meant the
girls could leave their bicycles in the driveway.
After years of unmerciful badgering by his colleagues,
Firefighter Correa agreed a few years ago to become
catcher for the firehouse's softball team. He was called
Yogi, and like the Yankee great, he saw the game as "90
percent mental, the other half physical." He had an arm
like a wrecking ball, powerful yet unpredictable.
But he played like a marine, with guts and grit.
"Ruben's greatest fault," said Daniel Murphy, a fellow
firefighter who has been the Correa family's liaison with
the Fire Department since Sept. 11, "was that he never
learned to take the first pitch."
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