OUT OF THE CLEAR BLUE SKY

Before Terrie Magro got married in 1983, her last name was Combatti, which seems almost too perfect. Combatti means "fight" in Italian -- as in "Fight for your children" or "Fight to make life easier for families who are going through what you went through." Those are two things Terrie Combatti Magro has done in spades.

Not that Terrie is a combatant in the intimidating sense of the word. Twenty years ago, she changed careers from clinical nursing to medical sales. When Terrie says it was an easy transition because "I discovered sales was something I was good at," the reasons why seem obvious. She is friendly and engaging, disarmingly open and honest.

Terrie also has a smile that comes so naturally and transforms her face so thoroughly that one can only imagine how hard it must have been to lose that smile in the awful time four years ago when she and her husband, Paul, discovered that both their sons had cancer.

The nightmare that would forever change the Magros' life began in March 2004, when their younger son, Marc, reported feeling a lump on his neck. Up until then, Marc, 10, and his older brother, Michael, 13, had enjoyed almost perfect health.

Indeed, the whole family had been living their own version of "It's a Wonderful Life" on New York's Long Island, and if a movie is ever made of their lives it would probably start with the story of how Terrie met Paul.

It was 1978, and Paul's left leg had been so severely fractured in a car accident that an orthopedic surgeon summoned to the emergency room at St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, NY said it might have to be amputated. Doctors saved the leg, but Paul ended up spending four months at St. Francis, where Terrie was working as a nurse.

One day at the end of a 3-11 pm shift, Terrie was waiting for a nurse friend on Paul's floor to finish up some paperwork. "She says go hang out with the guy in room 217 until I'm done because he's a lot of fun,” Terrie recalls, flashing her trademark smile, “and she was right. Lots of times after that a whole bunch of us would go visit Paul after work."

After Paul was discharged he went off to study at the Culinary Institute of America and the two lost touch, but then, one day in 1981, Paul came back to the hospital to pick up his stepfather, who had been at St. Francis for surgery (Paul's father had died a few years earlier). For nostalgia's sake, he decided to visit his old room, 217.

An orderly spotted him and called Terrie, who had just finished her shift and was getting ready to go home. The orderly told her to stay put because he was going to send Paul her way to say hello.

The two were married in 1983. They bought a house in the Long Island town of Hicksville because their families lived close by and because it had good train service into Manhattan, where Paul, by then a chef, often worked late into the night.

At first their dream was to open their own restaurant, but after weighing all the pros and cons – there are few businesses where the risks are greater and the work is harder – they decided on a different course. Paul became a full-time teacher in culinary arts at Barry Tech, a career and technical education center serving high school students from all over Nassau County, which includes about half of Long Island. Terrie moved into medical sales. With both Paul and Terrie working normal hours for the first time in their professional lives, they set about starting a family.

Michael was born Nov. 3, 1990 and Marc came 28 months later, on March 18, 1993. The boys were healthy, happy youngsters doted over by the extended and close-knit Magro and Combatti families.

Marc was the more studious; Michael, devoted to lacrosse, the more athletic. The comfortable Magro home on Julian Street became a kind of community center where you could find upwards of 25 kids on a typical Friday night.

Then Marc found that lump on his neck, just a few days before his 11th birthday.

Terrie, the one-time nurse, felt the lump and thought that Marc might have come down with mononucleosis. She took him to their pediatrician, who prescribed antibiotics and predicted that the lump would soon start shrinking in size.