‘I got my boy back’

When Tom Romano, an Air Force veteran who was incapacitated by an injury he initially suffered during the Vietnam War, was reunited with his son who had been deported in an adoption snafu, they wouldn’t let go of each other.

The drive north from JFK in New York seemed to take forever.

Robert Romano sat in the passenger seat as his lawyer, Ann Elise McCaffrey, did the driving. By the time they got to Tom Romano’s place in Manchester, N.H., it was dark and freezing.

A family friend, Bryan Clark, let them in, and father and son embraced for the first time in five years.

“I got my boy back,” Tom Romano said, his voice somewhat muffled, as his face was buried in his son’s shoulder.

“I couldn’t let go of him,” Robert Romano recalled later.

It was Tom Romano’s 67th birthday, his son’s presence being the best imaginable present.

The vagaries of immigration law had separated them. Tom adopted Robert when the boy was just 3, raising him as his son until the federal government declared that the adoption from a Tennessee orphanage was, legally, merely a guardianship, as if the 27 years that Robert spent in New Hampshire in his father’s loving care meant nothing. Robert was deported to Trinidad, where he was born to an impoverished family but otherwise had no connection.

In 2017, shortly after Robert was locked up to await deportation, his father fell and severed his spinal cord, the final and predictable stage of an injury he suffered in Thailand when he fell off a plane he was working on as an Air Force mechanic.

Tom Romano’s health, physical and mental, deteriorated swiftly after that, and the pandemic led to a shortage of home health care workers, leaving him alone most days, barely able to move around his apartment. Time was short, maybe just a year, his doctors said.

McCaffrey, the lawyer, applied for humanitarian parole, asking that Robert Romano be allowed to return to the United States to take care of his father. With some high-profile support, her pitch was finally approved in December. It should never have taken so long.

Robert Romano was determined to make it home for his father’s birthday, and that happened a couple of weeks ago.

Since then, father and son have caught up on the missed years, reprising some of the things they used to do together. Shopping at the local Market Basket is a favorite.

“Pops couldn’t get out,” Robert said. “He hadn’t been grocery shopping for a long time. We used to do that together when I was a kid. Getting to do that again together brought back memories, all of them good.”

Now, Tom Romano climbs into a motorized scooter and moves around the Market Basket like a human shopping list.

Father and son prepare meals together.

“My hands are more or less paralyzed, so I can’t do much cooking,” Tom Romano told me. “I’ve been supervising, and he’s been cooking. Lasagnas, stews, French toast, stuffed peppers. My name’s Romano. We eat a lot of pasta. I haven’t eaten like this for years. I’ve put on some weight.”

Tom’s medication regime means he sleeps a lot during the day and is often awake at night.

“I stay up with him,” Robert Romano said. “I don’t mind. We’re watching ‘The Sopranos.’ We watch a lot of Netflix. We talk. Last night, he didn’t fall asleep until 5:30 in the morning. I’m a little off my usual schedule, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.”

Last week, Robert checked in with his US Immigration and Customs Enforcement case agent.

“A really nice guy,” Robert said.

He has to check in weekly. McCaffrey is going to help Robert Romano apply for a Green Card. Robert Romano has established a Go Fund Me page to help defray what will be a long, expensive process.

But in the meantime, father and son relish the mundane. The ordinary things in life are extraordinary for them.

“I’m just so happy to have him for the time I have left,” Tom Romano said.

On Monday afternoon, Robert Romano was getting ready to give his dad a haircut.

“Every day I get to spend with Pops is a blessing,” Robert Romano said.

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