BY Patrice O'Shaughnessy
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, March 25th 2010, 4:00 AM
At the time, the 87 souls who perished in the Happy Land Social Club fire held the record for a mass murder in the U.S. Though far eclipsed by 9/11, the fire still holds wrenching memories 20 years later.
Most of the victims were young immigrants, the smoke killing them rapidly and insidiously as they sat at tables or stampeded for the lone exit.
A jilted lover carrying a grudge and a dollar's worth of gas torched the club - a firetrap that should havenever been open.
Here's a look back at that morning of March 25, 1990, and how it still resonates for a survivor who can't forget, victims' families in permanent sorrow and witnesses to the singular ghastliness of Happy Land.
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Maria Gale-Romero talks of her daughter, Isabel Lopez, in the present tense.
"On July 25, she's 37," Gale-Romero said of the pretty girl who loved to dance and wanted to be a doctor.
"She said her first paycheck would go straight to mom," the mother said, tears filling her eyes.
Isabel was 17 when she died in Happy Land, a popular place for Hondurans and other Central Americans.
It was up dark, narrow steps at 1959 Southern Blvd. at E.Tremont Ave.; owned by real estate scion Alex DiLorenzo 3rd, leased to Jay Weiss - then married to actress Kathleen Turner - and sublet to club manager Elias Colon.
A vacate order was tacked to the door 16 months earlier because the club lacked sprinklers and fire exits, but no one followed up to ensure it closed.
Gale-Romero had been there twice, and the crowded, windowless club worried her. She asked her nephew Norman Omar Clark, "Where do we go if there's a fire?"
"He laughed and said 'C'mon tia,we come here to dance.' "
Gale-Romero had another party the Saturday night of March 24, 1990, so she didn't join family members at a niece's birthday party at Happy Land.
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Lydia Feliciano is in a nursing home, on dialysis and recovering from open heart surgery. Her niece says she looks older than her 68 years.
Twenty years ago she worked the door of Happy Land, a stylish mother of two. Her former boyfriend, Julio Gonzalez, came in around 3:30 a.m. to try to win her back. They argued and a bouncer threwhimout. Hev owed to return to "close this club."
Gonzalez, a Marielito who came to the U.S. in the Cuban boatlift, bought $1 worth of gas at a nearby Amoco station and poured a trail of gasoline through the club's single entrance and into a hall. He threw two matches on it and watched it burn.
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Ruben Valladares was the deejay that night. He, Feliciano and just three others escaped.
"To me, it's the same day," said Valladares, 47. "The thing I never forget. It's still on my mind."
He was playing the La Punta music the Hondurans loved when the fire broke out. He ran through flames and stood in the street smoldering, his clothes seared off, burned over 40% of his body.
Retired FDNY Lt. Richard Bittles was with Ladder 58, first to arrive at the club, its front afire.
"It was eerie, no noise, no one outside," he said. "We made our way upstairs to the blackness, and when we shone a light, two people were sitting at a table, dead. It was surreal."
After removing about 15 victims and laying them on the sidewalk, they were told to stop because "we ran out of sheets," Bittles said.
He saw "a lot of tiny girls, young girls dressed up."
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About 4 a.m., Gale-Romero heard something had happened at the club.
"My heart fell, my legs shook," she said.
She ran over and saw no clubgoers milling about outside; only a distraught crowd.
They were all inside, dead: Isabel; two nieces, Alba Escoto Romero, 18, and Wendy Manaiza, 19; three nephews, Clark, 17, Luis Manaiza, 22, and Query Romero, 33.
She still gasps at the words: "Six from my family died."
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FDNY Capt. E.J. Tierney, then a Ladder 33 firefighter, was struck by how much the scene outside began to resemble something joyous; a parade.
"It was a sea of people ... three and four deep in the sidewalk, standing," he recalled.
He wiped the soot off the faces of about 25 victims, so police photographers could take their pictures for identification.
Detective First Grade Kevin Moroney of the 48th Precinct was assigned to find the arsonist.
Cops had no leads until Moroney and his partner found Feliciano at the temporary morgue at Public School 57, where she was looking for a photo of her dead niece, Besabeth Torres.
She told them about the fight with Gonzalez, and they went to his SRO and found him reeking of gasoline. He told the detectives, "I killed all those people. I'm sorry."
"He did it to close the place down so Lydia wouldn't have a job, she would have to rely on him," Moroney said.
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Eric Warner prosecuted Gonzalez.
"I was looking at a person who did not display any emotion for killing anyone, much less that many people," said Warner, counsel for the MTA inspector general. "People treated Lydia like she was the cause; she wasn't."
Gonzalez could get no more than 25 to life, because the 87 prison terms had to be concurrent. The killer is 55, and lives in obscurity in Clinton prison near the Canadian border.
He did not answer a letter requesting an interview.
A state prison spokeswoman said Gonzalez has a dozen infractions over the years: for smoking, refusing a direct order, being untidy, having a weapon.
He works in the garment shop, has learned floor covering and taken anger management classes.
His first shot at parole is in 2014. "Our concern is that this person was given 25 to life, and he's up for parole," said Shirley Gale-Martinez, who was 5 when her sister Isabel died. "It's really hitting us. He destroyed so many families. The victims were hardworking people."
Valladares said, "I'd be angry if he got out . . . he killed a lot of people. Most of them were my friends."
The smiley face on the Happy Land sign became a taunting symbol of bureaucratic failure, spurring the city to form a social club task force with 200 inspectors. The numbers dwindled over the years. Now the Fire Department's Public Assembly Night Team, and MARCH, Multi-Agency Response to Community Hotspots, inspect and close hazardous locations.
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On March 24, a ceremony will be held near the old Happy Land site. It is now a unisex hair salon.
Across the street, encircled by an iron fence, is a rose granite obelisk engraved with the words, "MAY THEY ALL BE HAPPY IN ETERNITY. ALTHOUGH WE CANNOT SEE THEM FOREVER THEY WILL BE A BEAUTIFUL PART OF OUR HEARTS' MEMORY."
Isobel Gamoneda, who lost two brothers, Lenin and Marco, in the fire, maintains the monument. She places flowers often, ties balloons that read "I love you" on Valentine's Day, and strings lights at Christmas.
"It's the same day," she says. "No years have passed." Feliciano moved clear across the Bronx to get away from blame. Her niece, Rosa Torres, said the family doesn't go to the yearly commemorations.
"There were a lot of grudges toward what Lydia's [boyfriend] did. We don't talk about it," said Torres,who raised the 3-year-old son Besabeth Torres left behind.
"It happened, I'm living my life. You can forgive but you can't forget." She said her aunt and Gonzalez had written to each other.
Valladares underwent numerous skin grafts and treatment for about a year, and moved to Florida. He "can't stand the cold" because of his injuries.
He and his wife of 22 years, Frances, have two daughters. He is looking for a job in the maritime industry on the Gulf Coast.
"I was lucky," he says.
Gale-Romero, 58, raised three children, but is frozen in time.
"Twenty years for me, it is not long," she said.
A photo gallery of the smiling, decked-out loved ones she lost lines a wall of her apartment. It's how they looked when they headed to Happy Land, before it became a synonym for lost lives, back when it was a place of good times, of the utopia they'd hoped to find in New York City.
poshaughnessy@nydailynews.com
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