By Maurice M. Krochmal, Special correspondent
Dilcea Pineda was two weeks pregnant when the smoke from the fire in the Happy Land Social Club killed her husband, Marvin Doubleday. Her son, Marvin Jr., is now four, and she has never for a day forgotten what happened on March 25 five years ago.
To mark the anniversary last weekend, they planned to dress in their best clothes on Saturday and place flowers at the unfinished monument to the victims of the fire, go across Southern Boulevard and stand outside the burned-out hulk of the club for a peaceful protest against the slow pace of justice for the families, and join other victims' families for Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic Church on Sunday.
"We want the city to know what happened," Pineda said. "When 87 people died, not only the people died, but the children's future died, too."
Marvin Jr.'s father was 23 years old when he and 86 others, mostly young Honduran immigrants, died in the crowded Happy Land club in the fourth-deadliest fire in New York history. It came on the 79th anniversary of the city's deadliest structural fire, at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. near Washington Square in Mnahattan, which killed 146 people, mostly young immigrant women.
Pineda and other victims' family members, here and in Central America, remember that Sunday morning five years ago when Julio Gonzalez, a Cuban immigrant mad at his former girlfriend, committed one of the worst mass murders in American history. He poured a dollar's worth of gasoline into the entrance of the social club at 1959-1961 Southern Blvd. and dropped two matches in it. Within five minutes, all 87 people who had been dancing on the second floor of the 50-by-20-foot building were dead.
Gonzalez was convicted of 176 counts of murder, arson and assault. He is serving 25 years to life at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, and was recently denied a new trial.
Pineda, a 29-year-old Honduran, said the activity surrounding the fifth anniversary has prompted Marvin Jr. to ask questions she can not answer.
"He asks where he is, but there is no explanation that can be given to him now," she said in Spanish. "I think he is not at the age for understanding death."
Because of Marvin Jr.'s future and that of the 99 other children orphaned by the fire, the 55 families of the victims have not accepted a settlement offer of $14 million from defendants in their civil actions, said Pineda.
"With what they pay the lawyers and what is taken out for taxes, it comes out to $150,000 for each person -- you can't have a future for a child with that," said Pineda, one of 12 family members who organized the vigil.
The lack of any conclusion to the civil suits against the building owner, as well the city, have kept the families from getting on with their lives.
The property owner, real estate heir Alex DiLorenzo 3d, is suing his insurers to force them to defend him against a lawsuit filed by the families. A Bronx Supreme Court justice ruled recently that the insurers, who maintain they are not liable because the Happy Land property was not listed on DiLorenzo's $26 million policies, will have to argue their case in court.
The district attorney declined to prosecute DiLorenzo and Jay Weiss, the building's lessor, on felony charges. But the men were fined and sentenced to community service for building code violations.