Caruso, Michael "Mike" Paul, 55, of Ashland, MA, passed away peacefully on March 28, 2018, at Mass General Hospital surrounded by family and friends. Mike was predeceased by his parents Michael Joseph and Isabella Rose (Lettieri) of Flushing, NY. He is survived by his loving wife, Amy Kathleen (Nawn); his daughters Isabella "Bella", Julia and Anna; his older sister, Debra Jean Marrone, her husband Mike of Glen Cove, NY, and their daughters Jennifer (Marrone) Bonislawski and Stephanie Marrone; and aunts Rose McClintock of Framingham, MA, and Aurora Grandinalli of Nanuet, NY. He is also survived by his mother-in-law, Linda Nawn of Ashland, MA; sister-in-law Linda (Nawn) Seese, her husband Byron and their children Zoe, Ryland, and Claire of Newburyport, MA, and his lovable pets: dogs Katniss and Maggie and cat Norah.
Mike was born at Flushing Hospital in Queens, NY, on June 6, 1962. He attended high school at St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, NY, where he participated in the Alvernian Drama Society, the Aviation Flight Simulator Club, and Project Up Peer Counseling, and played in the garage band Crimson Lake. He graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, with a B.E. in electrical engineering in 1984, where he played lacrosse and was a brother in Delta Tau Delta.
Mike started his career as a VLSI Designer at Hewlett Packard and continued on at Singer-Link to work on the General Aviation Flight Simulator. He arrived in Massachusetts in the mid-1990s to work at Apollo Computer, Inc., then went on to Motorola and most recently was employed at Cadence Design Systems in Chelmsford, MA, where he was an Application Engineer, a Mixed Signal Design Engineer and most recently the Director of Field Applications.
Throughout Mike's 12-year battle with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, he advocated for raising awareness of blood cancers. He founded Jazzed for a Cure, through which he channeled his musical talent to record the album Song for Amy with his band, the Mike Caruso Jazz Quintet. They played concerts and sold CDs to buy laptops, iPads and Wii video games, which they donated to Massachusetts General Hospital for the use of patients in isolation or undergoing long-term cancer treatment.
Mike was a lifelong learner. His passions were wrapped in the love of his family as an accomplished musician, an avid cyclist and an enthusiastic woodworker.
In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation in Mike's memory either to his beloved church, First Parish Framingham, 24 Vernon Street, Framingham, MA 01701, or the MGH Katherine A. Gallagher Integrated Therapies Program Fund to support the music and art therapies programs, online at giving.massgeneral.org or by mail to MGH Hospital, Development Office, 125 Nashua Street, Suite 540, Boston, MA 02114.
A memorial celebrating Mike's life will be held on April 14th at 2:00 p.m. at First Parish Framingham, 24 Vernon Street, Framingham, MA 01701. Those planning to attend, please consider bringing a written memory with your name included. We are planning to create a memory book for Mike's children.