It's ironic, said Olga Merino, that her husband, George Merino, escaped communist Cuba as a child only to be killed in a terrorist attack in this country.

Merino's family came to America from Cuba in 1968 when he was 7 years old. That event in his life forged a lifelong passion for politics and world history. Merino, 39, kept up with current events all over the world by way of a short-wave radio. His wife said he listened to news from Cuba each morning when he awoke and each night before he would go to sleep. "He loved history. He had dates memorized of wars and other things," said his wife.

Right before the attacks, he told his wife that approaching 40 had made him think that he needed to do something important with his life and was contemplating entering politics.

Merino worked for Fiduciary Trust for the past six months as a securities analyst. His new job took him to the 90th floor of Tower Two on Sept. 11.

Olga and George met when they were teenagers but lost touch for four years. In 1982, he called to see what she was up to. "I remember he said, 'Do you want to marry me?'" remembered Olga. Four years later, they were married. The couple have a daughter, Tania, 11, and reside in Bayside.

Whenever Merino had a spare moment, he would combine two favorite loves; time with his daughter and car shopping.

Describing Tania as "truly daddy's little girl," Olga Merino said her husband was filled with adoration for their daughter. On the weekends, he would take her to nearby car dealerships to look at all the new models. Right before the attacks, he was about to make a decision to buy one. "That's one of the things Tania said to me," Olga recalled. "'Daddy never got to buy his car.'"

-- Stacey Altherr (Newsday)
 

The smell of Little Neck Bay reminded George Merino of Cuba. He lived in Bayside, Queens, but the town of Matanzas, east of Havana, on the Straits of Florida, was his real home.

Mr. Merino fled his homeland in 1968, and he came to New York City with his family to begin a new life. He was a securities analyst for Fiduciary Trust in 2 World Trade Center and would have been 40 on Dec. 18.

As he approached his 40th birthday, his mind had started to turn once more toward Cuba, said Olga, his wife. "He was thinking of getting into politics," she said. "He always kept abreast of the Castro regime and wanted nothing more than a free Cuba and to go back."

Ms. Merino, too, is Cuban. She's a city-slicker from Havana. She came to America in 1970, two years after her husband came. They met at a party in New York when she was 19 and he was 20. They were married for 15 years.

Mr. Merino used to teach their daughter, Tania, 11, all about their island country, reading her Spanish news articles he found on the Internet. They also went biking together at the Bayside Marina, where the salt air reminded him of a homeland he would never see again.