When Amy and Billy Bosko said “I do,” they meant it.
“Not too many women would get into a relationship with someone like me,” Billy Bosko said quietly, “what with all the baggage I brought.”
“This is what I signed up for,” Amy Bosko said, holding her ailing husband. “I made a very solemn vow in front of my God, my family and my husband that I would stand by him, that no matter what life threw at us, we'd be together. It's easy to cut and run when things get difficult, but I'm not that type of person and neither is he.”
For better or for worse.
In 1997, Billy Bosko was a Navy sailor stationed in Norfolk. The Castle Shannon native had married his high school sweetheart, Michelle Moore-Bosko, whom he met at Keystone Oaks School District.
Everything was perfect — until Billy returned from an extended tour at sea to find his 18-year-old wife's body on their bedroom floor. She had been raped and stabbed repeatedly. A group of Navy sailors now known as the Norfolk Four confessed to her murder, recanted but were convicted. Three were conditionally pardoned after serving prison sentences. The fourth, convicted of rape, served 8 1⁄2 years in prison and was released. Omar Ballard confessed to the crime and is serving a double life sentence.
Less than a year after the murder, Billy met Amy at Olive Garden in Bethel Park. He had quit the Navy (memories of what happened kept him from going to sea again) and returned home. They went on a couple dates, as part of a group.
Then Billy disappeared.
“He had survivor's guilt,” Amy, 35, said. “This was a U.S. Navy sailor (but) when he was needed, he couldn't defend his wife because he was out at sea. He was punishing himself for still being alive. I decided that even if we didn't date, he was somebody that needed a friend. I tried to find him. Then I got a missed call. He said, ‘I'm sorry. You deserve a better explanation than this. One day we'll see each other again; I'll take you out for coffee and I'll explain everything.'
“I kept that voicemail. I knew we'd see each other again.”
In sickness and in health
A year later, he reappeared. They dated. He proposed at a B&B in Hermitage. They married in 2001 at a church in Castle Shannon.
They both brought “baggage,” medically and emotionally, and leaned on each other for support.
Amy has acute asthma and Crohn's disease. She said she had two brain injuries from car crashes, including one that put her in a coma for three days. She is a rape survivor.
And Billy had the memories.
“I've woken up with his arms around my throat,” Amy said. “He's sound asleep, thinking he's attacking one of the people who attacked Michelle. ... I joke that Michelle is my sister wife. She's up in heaven, I'm down here, and between the two of us, we're keeping him alive.”
Despite living a nightmare, they handled anything that came their way. Billy sought counseling. They bought a home in Espyville, Crawford County. Billy got a job as a corrections officer at SCI Mercer. They tried to have kids and came close twice, until miscarriages ended that dream.
Then came St. Patrick's Day 2013.
A blood clot traveled from Billy's heart to his brain, broke into five pieces and caused major strokes.
“On a bad day, I'll wake up and it takes me a while to realize who I am, where I am, who Amy is,” Billy, 37, said, leaning on his cane and speaking in slow, deliberate sentences. “My brain doesn't work right; it's hard to find words.”
For richer or for poorer.
After the strokes, Amy said, she was hospitalized 11 times in one six-month span for her Crohn's disease. Bills piled up. The Boskos needed help.
That's when old friends stepped in.
“Billy was always the guy everyone could talk to and depend on, no matter where he was or what he was going through,” said Hellena Twigg, Billy's friend and classmate at Keystone Oaks High School.
Twigg and others organized a spaghetti dinner May 9 in Dormont to raise money for the Boskos. They established a GoFundMe account with the hope of raising $10,000 to help the Boskos make mortgage payments. Until Billy's retirement disability is finalized, Amy said, they are living on food stamps and a $400 monthly check from Bill's military disability.
“I was raised that it's a man's job to provide for his family, no matter what,” Billy said. “That's the hardest thing: With the strokes, I can't.”
Until death do us part.
“You wake up every day determined that, OK, even if today is the worst day, I'm still going to find a silver lining — even if it's just that God let you wake up that day, because being alive is so much better than the alternative,” Amy said. “We're both too young to lie in pine boxes.
“God can throw anything he wants to throw at me,” she said, stroking her husband's cheek, “as long as I get to keep him.”
