Feeney looks at his daughter Deidre's soccer trophies in his New Hyde Park home. Feeney also lost his wife Vera in the crash. (Newsday / J. Conrad Williams)

John Feeney is left with a silent house in New Hyde Park, a half-eaten roast in the refrigerator, and the knowledge that he will never again sit with his wife and teenage daughter for their 5 p.m. dinner.

In North Massapequa, Ray Lang's perfectly kept garden, with its trimmed hedges and gingerly planted flowers, now sits as a stark reminder to family and friends that the 51-year-old TWA flight attendant isn't coming back.

And in a quiet Pittsburgh suburb, a Victorian home that Lawrence native Judy Penzer renovated sits empty, never to be enjoyed by the muralist who was en route to Paris to celebrate the completion of her dream home.

As family members, friends and a nation continued to mourn the 230 people killed Wednesday night after TWA Flight 800 exploded off the South Shore of Long Island, they are also trying to deal with the sad legacy of what the victims left behind. At least 10 of the passengers were from Long Island, and Friday, relatives, friends and anyone touched by their lives began to deal with a future without them.

It started like any ordinary day. Ray Lang, 51, of North Massapequa, had stopped to buy his mother, Mildred, a strawberry rhubarb pie.

He munched on a turkey sandwich for lunch and headed to work as a TWA flight attendant way before he was supposed to arrive at JFK airport.

"He was always there four or five hours early," said Ray's only sibling, Ted. "He used to hang around the hangar and talk to people."

Lang, who had a passion for travel, was excited about his Paris trip. He was assigned to first class, where, his family said, he could perform the "Ray Lang Show," smiling, chatting and serving up fine wines and warm breads.

Also on board was a close friend, Melinda Torche of Irvine, Calif., another flight attendant.

"He used to say, 'They are going to pay me to do this? Wow,'" recalled his sister-in-law, Carol. For Lang, who served in the Army and spent years building houses, his love for travel began decades ago after a three-month backpacking trip through Europe.

But while he longed for flights to Europe, the 6-foot, 1-inch man with blondish hair, pressed for assignments on the wide-body and higher ceilings of the 747 so he could better manuever.

"His saying was, 'If it ain't a Boeing, I ain't going,'" laughed Lang's niece and goddaughter, Wendy Lang, 27, also a TWA flight attendant.

Friday, Ray was supposed to return home from Paris. Instead, friends and neighbors stopped by to remember the outgoing Farmingdale High School graduate.

They recalled his days in a do-wop group, singing in a candy store parking lot and hosting taco parties where he would gobble" up the food.

Lang, who was single, also gobbled up two to three books a week on American history and hungered for crossword puzzles and Jeopardy.

When Lang wasn't busy reading, he and his mother carefully tended the flower and vegetable garden surrounding the family home they lived in for more than 30 years.

There are red, pink and peach roses. Lobelia Blues and marigolds. Recently, Lang planted dahlias.

Days before the Paris trip, Lang carefully clipped the hedges in front and checked the flowers. He made routine rounds, pulling up in his white Dodge convertible in front of the local cleaners.

"I was having a tough day, everybody was complaining," recalled Tom Martingale, owner of Broadway Cleaners. "He walked in the door and told me what a good job I do. That helped."

Lang's white linen jacket still hangs in Martingale's shop.

The Dodge sits in the family driveway.

Up until his trip, Ted Lang had been planning to go with his brother to Cairo. Ray's niece, Wendy Lang, said she, instead, may take her father. "It would be a nice thing to do in rememberance of him."

John Feeney was watching the news Wednesday night when he heard there was a plane down. Just hours before, he had put his wife and daughter in a cab because his wife, Vera, insisted he shouldn't drive back from the airport in the dark.

"I said, 'have a good holiday, a nice trip' when they kissed me goodbye," Feeney said. "I can still see them waving to me from the cab." His wife left a cooked roast beef in the refrigerator for her husband, fearing he wouldn't eat properly while they were away.

"I said goodbye to them, thinking they would be back to me in three weeks," Feeney, 55, said Friday, speaking of his 53-year-old wife and daughter, Deirdre, 17, who died in Wednesday's crash.

Both mother and daughter had planned a brief sightseeing trip in Paris -- a high school graduation present for Deirdre -- before going on to Roscommon, Ireland, where they would visit Vera's elderly parents. They had made the trip every year with special airline passes from John, a TWA ramp attendant. He said his wife and daughter had tried to get on Tuesday's flight, but it was booked, forcing them to take TWA Flight 800 Wednesday night. Deirdre, an avid soccer player and honor student at Kellenberg Memorial High School, in Uniondale, was trying to convince her mother to visit some French soccer stadiums, he said.

Sitting in a neat living room, among his daughter's prom and graduation pictures, porcelain figurines his wife collected and pillows she had knit, Feeney said he was trying to cope with deaths he refused to believe were real, until Thursday. Now he's trying to deal with having lost what he said Friday was his whole life.

"I'm trying to take things day to day, but as soon as I lay my head on the pillow at night, it comes back to me," said Feeney. "It's the silence that's hard. It's so quiet without them."

Deirdre, an honor student who had just received a full scholarship to Mount Saint Vincent College in the Bronx, loved to play soccer, Feeney said. It was her mother who drove her to practices and to games, where she would stay and watch her daughter perfect her defense moves , he said. "They did everything together, even telling me what to do," Feeney said. "I called them the two bosses. I just have to believe they're watching over me right now."

Muralist Judy Penzer was in love with Paris.

At 16, she had traveled to the City of Light to pursue a career as a painter and fashion designer.

So when her architect and friend, Jill Watson, 32, suggested a little vacation in Paris after months of work on Penzer's house, the former Lawrence resident jumped at the chance.

A day before her flight, Penzer, 49, who moved to Pittsburgh two years ago, called her brother Richard in Lawrence, excited about her upcoming trip.

"They just decided to bum around looking at castles for a while," said Richard Penzer. "They both loved architecture, art and design."

Judy Penzer had found her dream house in a Pittsburgh neighborhood called Shadyside, its red neon "X" over the door and a metal chimney running up the front making it stand out among the row houses. Penzer had asked Watson to design it, said Jackie Penzer, her sister in-law.

Fielding more than a hundred telephone calls at this home Friday, Richard Penzer marveled at the number of lives his sister had touched. "A hundred Pittsburghers, from the mayor down, have been calling," Richard Penzer said.

In just two years, Judy Penzer had become a very visible part of Pittsburgh. It was hard not to notice her giant murals that adorned downtown buildings. One 15-story painting depicts sports legends Mario Lemieux, Roberto Clemente, Joe Greene, Jack Lambert and Bill Mazeroski.

Despite her privileged upbringing, Judy Penzer rooted for the underdog, her brother said.

"How do you sum up a person's life?" Penzer said. "Judy led a vibrant life, kept to her morals and her vision of life. She could have lived another 20, 30, 40 years but she lived the best she could until 49."

Pete Bowles contributed to this story.