Pain lingers from rebel blasts

friends on his birthday when his mother called him inside. His father, Frank, 33, had been killed at Fraunces.

“It was as bad a situation as you can imagine,” Joseph Connor, now 50, said. “You go from celebrating your birthday to finding out your dad was murdered, all in an instant.”

The terror group later released a communique, which read, “You have unleased a storm from which you comfortable Yankis (sic) cannot escape.”

Senft, Knox and Connor have turned their thoughts to those days because National Puerto Rican Day Parade organizers will honor Oscar Lopez Rivera, 74, a mastermind of the bombing campaign, on June 11 as a “National Freedom Hero.”

Lopez Rivera served nearly 40 years in prison for sedition — plotting to overthrow the government — and other felonies for his role in the FALN. He was sentenced to 15 additional years for plotting a prison escape. President Barack Obama commuted his 55-year sentence in January, and he was released from house arrest in San Juan on May 17.

Police Commissioner James O’Neill, the police and fire unions and other groups will boycott the event as a result. Sponsors, including the Daily News, Corona, Univision, AT&T and the Yankees, have pulled out.

City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Mayor de Blasio say they will march. On Thursday, Mark-Viverito repeated her support for Lopez Rivera, saying he was “not linked to any act of violence.”

A senior law enforcement source told The News on Thursday there is no doubt that Lopez Rivera was deeply involved.

Dynamite found in a Chicago safe house linked to him was the same as the explosive used in an Aug. 3, 1977, blast in New York, the source said. In that explosion at the Mobil Employment Services office on 150 E. 42nd St., one man died and five others were injured.

Dynamite, timers, blasting caps, disguises and ammo were found in a Chicago apartment linked to him, the source said.

Cooperating witness Alfred Mendez said Lopez Rivera trained him to make bombs, the source said.