Bereft campsite bears witness to family tragedy

Along Doe Trail, a crushed-stone path lined with cedar and pine trees at the Hunter Lake Campground, sits a colony of Long Islanders.

There are the Gregors of Massapequa in Campsite 76. The Donatos of West Islip in 82.

Site 84 has no people.

Site 84, with its empty stroller and empty children's chairs and empty camping trailer, belongs to the Schulers, the West Babylon family devastated by the horrific wrong-way crash a week ago Sunday on the Taconic State Parkway. Five members of their family were among the eight people who were killed.

-Click to see the latest photos from the Taconic crash tragedy

Hunter Lake was the Schulers' home away from home - a quiet getaway in the Catskills where they'd travel weekends from Long Island to fish, swim, play, partake in the ice cream socials and pancake breakfasts, and be part of a tight community of people from Long Island and beyond.

It's where Diane Schuler was driving from when she barreled the wrong way down the Taconic in a minivan, hitting two other vehicles before hers rolled down an embankment and burst into flames. How Schuler ended up on that deadly path has been the subject of a State Police investigation and pensive conversation at the campground all weekend.

Hunter Lake and the community of several dozen families who camp here said in interviews this weekend that their little paradise off Route 17 has been forever changed by the deaths of Schuler, 36, her daughter, Erin, 2, and her nieces Emma Hance, 8, Alyson Hance, 7, and Kate Hance, 5, of Floral Park.

"It's an emptiness that's going to stay with a lot of our seasonals here, no matter how well they knew them or how well they didn't know them," said campground owner Ann Scott, 77, who has had the business in her family for more than three decades. "I think it's going to take time for people to feel comfortable again. I don't think you'll ever forget it. It's the most drastic thing that ever happened to us in this campground."

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the regulars who rent the campsites for the May-to-October season began returning for the first time since the crash. They found Site 84 intact but bereft of people. Just possessions were there.

As campers drove up a muddy road and stopped into Hunter Lake's office and general store, Scott was part counselor, offering words of comfort, part newswoman, giving details about what happened, and part fundraiser, accepting donations to help the Schuler and Hance families.

"This is for the fund," said camper Ishbel McQuat, 70, of Redding, Conn., as she handed Scott a crisp $20 bill.

For her part, Scott is contemplating how to remember her longtime campers: by planting a tree? With memorial photos on the bulletin board? For now, she'll keep Site 84 as is until the Schulers tell her what to do.

Joanne Donato, 69, of West Islip, whose site is close to the Schulers', has the memory of the children "laughing and playing and having a good time" burned into her mind.

Now, she said, "I can't even look at the site when I go by, I can't. I can't look at it," she said, wiping tears from her eyes with a tissue.

Sharon Gregor, who with her husband, John, spends weekends in Site 76, also teared up as she pondered the Doe Trail without one of its Long Island families.

"We're a big family up here," she said.

Just one week earlier, she watched the Schuler and Hance kids play with her stuffed bear and walk past Site 76 to go to the playground near the rec center.

"You leave here and you just assume that you'll come back the next weekend. And they're not coming back," she said. John Gregor made the sign of the cross as his wife spoke.

Before Sunday's crash, the Gregors and the Schulers usually saw one another just at the Sullivan County campground, not at home on Long Island.

But on Wednesday, the Gregors went to the wake on Long Island, to console Danny Schuler as he mourned.

-Click to see the latest photos from the Taconic crash tragedy