The 53 happy, smiling photos were a haunting reminder of the lives wiped out in the explosion of TWA Flight 800.

The photos were mounted on a red display board placed near the doors of a Publix Supermarket in Lighthouse Point. They were all TWA employees: 18 crew members, a second crew being transported to Paris and 20 off-duty workers who had the misfortune to catch a free ride on a doomed plane.

For Toni Weber, the faces of her friends are a constant reminder of why she’s standing outside for hours in her TWA flight attendant uniform. She’s collecting donations for the 19 children of TWA employees who died in the Flight 800 explosion.

Those pictures help people put a face on the tragedy, said Weber, who is trying to raise money for the Friends of Flight 800 fund. She was outside of the Publix from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, handing out flyers and accepting donations, which will all go to the fund set up by the Independent Federation of Flight Attendants.

“That’s why I bring the pictures out,” said Weber, a 27-year TWA veteran. “It’s for people to see that these are our next-door neighbors and our friends.”

Weber, of Lighthouse Point, has been stationing herself at various places around Broward in her effort to help raise money for the children.

Terry Fitzgerald, an IFFA executive board member and the group’s representative at the JFK airport in New York, said more than $20,000 has been raised for the fund.

On Friday, one woman had tears in her eyes as she handed Weber her money. Many expressed sorrow about the July 17 explosion that killed 230 people and anger about the possibility that it was caused by a bomb.

Other people who stopped to talk to Weber told her about family members or friends who work in the airline industry.

Weber, 48, also often struggled to maintain her composure as she asked for donations. While she now flies the TWA route from New York to Tel Aviv, Israel, she has flown the New York-to-Paris route. Her husband is a pilot.

The airline industry is like a family, Weber said, and this explosion is another strike at its heart.

“I had so many friends on board,” she said. “I’m unbelievably sad. This was a tremendous group of very fine people. I’ve flown with them for many years. I am so sad. I’m having a tough time getting through it.

“We just kind of feel like our hearts have been ripped out. You expect to lose people here and there, but not so many at one time.”

To keep focused, Weber said, she thinks about Janet Christopher, a flight attendant and one of Weber’s friends who died on Flight 800.

“That’s what I try to keep in the back of my mind, when I’m out slugging around, doing this,” she said. “I keep her image in the back of my mind.”