A search sadly ended

[Times photo: Cherie Diez ] When workers at ground zero in April reached the deepest levels of Sept. 11’s destruction, they found the body of firefighter Thomas Casoria, the cousin of Gerd Schuch’s wife. Schuch spent a week on the site in September hoping to locate the missing man.

[Times photo: Cherie Diez 2001] St. Petersburg firefighter Gerd Schuch spent a week in September trying to find fellow firefighter Thomas Casoria, whose photo is displayed on his helmet. Casoria was a cousin of Schuch’s wife, Maureen.

Gerd Schuch's yard has always been a reliable barometer of how he is feeling. These days it's back in shape -- lawn mowed, flowers watered, dead branches hauled off.

"I'm doing pretty good," he says.

In the days after his return from ground zero, where he spent a week in September in a fruitless search for his wife's cousin, a New York firefighter, the yard wasn't looking so hot.

Schuch, an emergency medical technician in St. Petersburg, had come home deeply affected by the devastation he had seen and touched. That moment of psychological transformation, when he reexamined his placid life from the perspective of one who has seen true horror, was the subject of a story in Floridian in October.

In the seven months since the story, Schuch (pronounced "shoe") has recovered his equilibrium. Mowing the lawn, which had seemed trivial compared to the loss of thousands of lives, has resumed its rank among the household chores. But Schuch has kept his vow to live more in the present moment.

Changed at ground zero A St. Petersburg firefighter travels to New York, hoping to rescue a family member and fellow firefighter who disappeared in the rubble. He emerges from the crucible with a new worldview.

As proof he offers the black 1998 GMC pickup with the extended cab parked in his driveway. For a man who drove his last car, a 1972 El Camino, for 10 years, buying the truck bordered on wild abandon.

"I never would have bought that if I hadn't gone up there," Schuch, 36, says. "I was always worried about saving money, worried about the future instead of living now."

Much has changed at ground zero, too.

It was raining on the still-smoking mountain of twisted steel and concrete when Schuch returned home in September. He had spent a week in that hellish place, helping to recover the remains of 10 victims, none of them firefighter Thomas Casoria, his wife Maureen's cousin.

The digging never stopped.

Slightly more than 1,000 of the 2,823 victims were identified from the tens of thousands of body parts unearthed from the 1.6-million tons of debris. Half of the city's 343 fallen firefighters were recovered. But Casoria, 28, was not among them.

Then in March, as bedrock appeared in the dwindling debris, workers began to find bodies in groups. In one month the remains of 50 victims were recovered. Some of them were intact, having been trapped in pockets of rubble.

On April 8, nearly seven months after the attacks, a firefighter's body was discovered still in his heavy bunker gear, a gold religious medal around his neck.

"It had Thomas' name on the back," Schuch says.

There's a sad irony in the location of Casoria's body so close to the bottom of the pit.

"They were almost out (of the building)," Schuch says. "That's what they figure."

In a few weeks, Casoria's family will hold a memorial service. His parents waited to hold one, unwilling to endure the pain of two ceremonies as some families have.

Schuch hopes to attend. Being there would fulfill two family obligations.

Back in October, Schuch promised his wife, Maureen, that he would no longer put off a trip to New York City they had planned on taking for many years. They had planned to arrive in the city just in time to see the Fourth of July fireworks over the altered Manhattan skyline. Now, Schuch would like the family vacation to coincide with the memorial.

Either way, he will drive. In his new truck.

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