WEARE, N.H. (AP) – After eight months in Kuwait and Iraq, Marine Master Gunnery Sgt. Dale Racicot just wanted to see his wife and daughters.

Giddy with excitement, they headed for Manchester Airport on Friday in Racicot’s cherished “Marine Corps green” Toyota Tundra to start what daughter Keri Magnarelli called “a reunion of a lifetime.”

Back home three hours later, Racicot crumpled onto his dining room floor, dead of a heart attack at 54.

In an interview Tuesday, Janet Racicot said she heard the thud from the kitchen, where she was getting a glass of water.

“I came running over to him and I knew something serious was going on. He looked at me and said, ‘I love you all,’ and that was the last thing he said.”

“When you love someone and they go to war you have to mentally prepare yourself for the fact they might not come home, so we were just thrilled,” said Magnarelli, 24. “We had three hours. They were the most precious hours we could have asked for.”

In Kuwait, Racicot headed a six-member intelligence team that analyzed statements from Iraqi prisoners of war.

Janet Racicot said her husband had played a role in the celebrated rescue of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch of Palestine, W.Va.

“He was with intelligence. All I can tell you is he played a part in that operation,” she told WMUR-TV.

Staff Sgt. Luis DeJesus described Racicot as a dedicated Marine, a shrewd analyst and a good friend. DeJesus, who at 33 was the youngest member of the team, said Racicot was a careful listener who was a mentor to his Marines.

“Everybody who ever met him and has served with him has been touched by what a great person he was,” he said.

DeJesus said Racicot often talked about how proud he was of his family.

“He was very focused about going home and being with his family,” DeJesus said. “He used it as a light at the end of the tunnel at times when that light was very dim for us.”

His family was equally devoted to him.

“Every morning there was a cup of tea, nearly every day, a love note,” said his widow Janet. “Every girl dreams of the man she’s going to marry. I got to marry that man.”

Photographs and mementos were spread over the dining room table Tuesday at the Racicots’ rustic home on a dirt road. Outside were American and Marine Corps flags and yellow ribbons on trees.

Racicot was in the Marine Reserves. In civilian life, he had been the lead mechanical engineer at Vicor Corp. in Andover, Mass. The company makes power supplies and other electrical equipment.

His family said he was a devout Christian who was a drummer in the “music ministry” at Goffstown Christian Fellowship church, where his funeral will be held Thursday.

Racicot joined the Marines in 1969, when he was 20, and was on active duty until 1975. He left the service to help raise his daughters and rejoined in 1985.

Magnarelli and Stacey Racicot, 20, a college student home for the summer, said their father hated the Iraqi regime and looked forward to using his long years of training in the war.

He returned from the Mideast to Camp Pendleton in California, where he spent three weeks before flying home Friday. He was to report to Worcester, Mass., this week for processing to end his active duty.

He told his family he wanted a quiet homecoming.

“He was a selfless man. He didn’t want a big entourage. He didn’t want a party. He just wanted it to be the three of us and my husband,” Magnarelli said.

During his few hours at home, Racicot handed out trinkets, Kuwaiti money, bandannas and other gifts he had picked up overseas.

At 2:30 a.m. Saturday, he suggested that everyone go to bed because they would have the whole weekend to spend together. He never made it.

AP-ES-08-12-03 1920EDT

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