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If Steve Wasn’t On The Bay, From the windows in Stephen Russell’s bedroom on Bayfield Avenue in Arverne, you can see Jamaica Bay and beyond it, the space where the Twin Towers once stood. "Steve was born and raised in Arverne, right in this house and he lived on the bay," says his older brother, Cliff Russell. "If he wasn’t on it, then he was in it or under it." Russell was a firefighter with Engine 55 in Little Italy. When the Twin Towers were attacked, Steve and his fellow firefighters were investigating a gas leak nearby. They rushed to the towers and joined other FDNY units in evacuating those moving down from the upper floors. That was the last that was heard from Russell and the other men of Engine 55. The only person in the unit who survived was the chauffer, who remained with the truck. Cliff, who is an operating engineer, spent the next weeks searching for his brother’s body in the smoky rubble that was once the World Trade Center. "I was determined to find him one way or another," Cliff told The Wave. "He’s my brother." "They called him ‘MacGiver’ at the firehouse," He could fix anything, do anything that needed to be done," Cliff adds. "I fully expected to find him walking down a tunnel under the rubble, leading hundreds of people to safety." Cliff did "find" his brother, but it was in a totally unexpected place. He found him in the pages of the New York Post. On Monday, October 22, the Post had a story on Page 6 headlining the fact that the bodies of seven firefighters had been found in the rubble. Cliff called Steve’s firehouse. He says that the firefighter who he spoke to almost fainted when he heard that the bodies of several of the firefighters from that house had been found. "I always expected that I would find Steve, but I did not think that it would be in the pages of the Post." "It blew me away that not even his firehouse knew about it," he adds. Steve, 40, was a Rockaway kid. He graduated from the St. Rose of Lima Elementary School and Beach Channel High School. He attended Kingsboro Community College. He went into the carpenter’s union until he could get "on the job" with the fire department. He was so skilled that he built his own furniture for his apartment and built many items for the firehouse as well. A memorial that he built for firefighters who died in the line of duty now includes his picture and those of his bother firefighters from Engine 55 who were lost that day. "Everywhere you go in that firehouse," Steve is there," says Chris Russell, Steve’s sister-in-law He built his own memorial. "Even the kids in the community were he worked miss him. He was really good with the kids." Steve was also close with his brother’s children. "The family Christmas was always at Uncle Stevie’s house," says Chris Russell. "He was constantly diving with his niece, Erika and his three nephews, Evan, Cliff and Christopher." In addition, he is Christopher’s godfather. In a side room in his apartment, Russell had all of his diving equipment laid out. "He was going diving at Almost Paradise that weekend with some of the kids," Chris Russell says sadly. On September 11, Christopher was away at school. "He knew that his uncle would be at the World Trade Center, and he had to do something to get away from the television news," Cliff Russell told us. "He went out and played football, something that he rarely did. He tore the ligaments in his knee and had to be operated on. When we got the call from a hospital, we thought that they had found Steve and he was in the hospital." When we asked his parents to tell us what they remember most about the fallen firefighter, his mother’s eyes brightened for the first time during the interview. "He had big, beautiful eyes," she said. "That was the first thing that you saw about him. He loved life. He loved the bay, swimming, diving, sailing, skiing." She went silent for a moment. "What I remember most about Steve, is that he believed that he could do anything, fix anything," his father added. "Whenever anything went wrong, it was always ‘what’s the big deal, dad. We can fix this." From the windows of her apartment, just downstairs from her son’s in the home they have lived in "forever," his mom watched the towers burn across the bay. "I took some videotape of what was going on, but I finally had to walk away from watching it. I just couldn’t look anymore," his mother says. Russell’s funeral will be held at St. Rose of Lima Church at 10 a.m. on Saturday, November 2. Stephen Russell in his turnout gear. "Everywhere you go in the firehouse, Steve is there," his sister-in-law says. Steve Russell spent much of his spare time with his niece and his nephews. Here, he shares a back-yard trampoline with his niece, Erika.
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