Chiara Pesce (AP)
PARK MEMORIAL: WTC victim Danny Pesce’s 1988 Mercury, with its flat tires, remains in his SI driveway at behest of mom Chiara (right yesterday at Ground Zero). (
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Angela Pesce-Frunzi says her brother Danny lived a simple life, right down to the worn Mercury Cougar he left in the driveway the day before he died at the World Trade Center.
Eleven years later, the car is still there. Their mother refuses to move it.
“She wouldn’t let anybody get rid of it. If she gets rid of his stuff, she feels like she’s getting rid of his memory,” Angela said yesterday as she and her 75-year-old mother, Chiara — in a wheelchair and clutching a smiling photo of Danny — made the solemn trek from their Staten Island home to the WTC memorial on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.
On his last full day of life, Danny Pesce drove his mother to a Brooklyn cemetery to visit his grandmother’s grave. He then drove them back home, pulled the car in the driveway and never got in it again.
Danny, 34, got up the next day and took an express bus to work at Cantor Fitzgerald.
He was at his desk on the 105th floor of the north tower when a hijacked plane slammed into the side of the skyscraper.
With his office floor in flames, Danny frantically called Angela to ask her if she knew what was going on. Angela turned on the TV and called him back and urged him to leave the building.
Danny got off the phone, but he didn’t hang up the receiver. Angela could still hear him on the other end organizing an evacuation, his voice moving farther away.
She heard people running, doors closing and glass breaking.
Then she heard nothing at all.
“That conversation will be in my mind forever,” Angela said.
Angela, 37, recalled that horrible day as she pushed her frail mother in a wheelchair around the memorial and spoke about her brother’s devotion to his family and his love of cars.
Danny had gotten a good deal on the car. The previous owner had been an elderly man who drove it only to the store. After 13 years, the white, 1988 two-door coupe had only 48,000 miles.
Angela’s father, who died three years ago, was ready to get rid of it. But Angela’s mother would sooner sell her soul.
“Don’t you touch that car!” the mother would yell anytime the subject came up. “It’s not going anywhere!”
The car isn’t the Pesce family’s only shrine. Danny spent weekends at home taking care of his parents, and the house looks like he never left.
“His pajamas are still in the drawer,” Angela said. “The clothes are still in the closet.”
Yesterday, Angela took her mother home, then grabbed the keys to Danny’s car. The engine is dead, and the tires are flat, but it took her places she hadn’t been in years.
“When I sit in here, it’s like time stood still,” Angela said. “It’s all him in here.”