By:LARRY MAIER
Howie Horowitz got sick to his stomach when he opened his store, Little Deli Express, at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 12.
The train-station parking lot across from his Merrick deli is always empty at that hour. On that sobering morning last week, however, the day after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, there were dozens of cars in the lot. Horowitz believed that many who had innocently parked their cars the previous morning to ride the train to work in Manhattan would not return alive.
At 5:30 a.m., a paramedic came into his deli for coffee and told Horowitz of the horrible carnage she had seen in lower Manhattan, now referred to as Ground Zero.
"She was in tears," said Horowitz, shaking his head, still in disbelief the day after the attacks. "And I was in tears with her."
Indeed, Merrick, Long Island, New York and America wept in the hours and days after terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers, crippled the Pentagon and killed thousands of innocent people.
In the days and weeks to come, family and friends, who loved ones said were missing last week, will be confirmed dead. Funerals and memorial services will be standing room only.
War may be waged.
But, though the future may be unclear, one thing is certain. No one who witnessed the horrific, murderous events of Sept. 11, 2001, will ever forget them or make sense of them.
Chris Wrynn, a mother of two at Fayette Elementary School, works as a paralegal in lower Manhattan. Her subway pulled into the World Trade Center station five minutes after the first airliner smashed into Tower One. As Wrynn scurried to safety on the street, she and others turned to watch with unbelieving eyes as the tower burned.
"There was debris falling, and we saw bodies. People were holding hands and jumping," Wrynn said.
When Tower Two exploded into a fireball after the second plane hit, she ran and didn't look back again. "It all seemed so unreal," said Wrynn, who walked her children to school the day after. "It was the scariest day of my life."
Joe Lippman was on the Long Island Expressway near Maspeth, Queens when the first airliner hit. Traffic stopped, and people got out of their cars to watch the smoke plume in the distance. Then the second airliner struck, and, shortly after, the towers crumbled.
Lippman, 67, said he never imagined he would see such a terrible sight. "I saw grown men crying all around me," said Lippman, picking at his breakfast in the Marybill Diner the day after. "It was a total nightmare."
For many in Merrick, and around the nation, revenge was the topic of the day on the day after.
"I hate to say this about human life," said Al Vasconi, owner of Al's Shoe Repair on Merrick Avenue. "But we should go over there and start bombing. We should be over there right now."
Steve Gordon, eating breakfast with Lippman, said he thought the same, but was unsure where to start dropping the bombs. "After Pearl Harbor, we had an address, we knew where to go," said Gordon. "But here...."
He didn't finish the sentence.
At least one Merrick resident had reason to feel relief the day after. Her loved one was lost and then found.
Nicole Reiter's fianc
