“Love your children. Cherish your children.”
Those were the words of Warren Hance, who kept his emotions in check as he delivered the eulogy today for his five family members who died in a wrong-way crash on the Taconic State Parkway.
But as he spoke those simple words, he choked back tears and mourners erupted in sobs at the tears at Our Lady of Victory Church in Floral Park, L.I.
“Kiss your children,” the father of three said. “Don’t ever forget.”
Then he broke down, unable to continue.
When the service ended, the plain white pine coffins of the five victims were borne from the church, placed in black hearses and taken to Holy Rood Cemetery in Westbury for burial.
A single church bell tolled and bagpipers played the spiritual, “Going Home.”
Hance, 41, lost his three daughters, Emma, 8; Alyson,7; and Katie, 5, on Sunday when a minivan driven by his sister, Diane Schuler, 36, who was going the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway and crashed head-on into an SUV.
Schuler and her 2-year-old daughter, Erin, were also killed, as were three Yonkers men in the SUV.
Half an hour before the crash, Schuler called her brother to say she was having problems seeing and was feeling disoriented.
State police said she make the call from the Westchester County side of the Tappan Zee Bridge after pulling into a stopover.
For some unknown reason, she left her cellphone there.