{"id":166,"date":"2011-09-11T05:00:45","date_gmt":"2011-09-11T12:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morningnewsinverse.com\/?p=166"},"modified":"2011-09-11T05:00:45","modified_gmt":"2011-09-11T12:00:45","slug":"is-stephanie-alright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=166","title":{"rendered":"“Is Stephanie Alright?” – A 9\/11 Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday, September 11, 2011\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>By Bob Sparrow<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I was awakened\u00a0by a phone call at around 6:20 a.m. on September 11, 2001.\u00a0 It was my mother-in-law from Minnesota; she asked, \u201cIs Stephanie alright?\u201d\u00a0 I said something like, \u201cI guess so, why?\u201d\u00a0 She said, \u201cTurn on the TV, there\u2019s been a bombing in New York.\u201d\u00a0 My heart sank.\u00a0 My daughter, Stephanie was living in New York for the past several years; she had recently graduated from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and was pursuing a Broadway career.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 After turning on the TV and trying to comprehend what was happening, I immediately tried to call Stephanie on her cell phone.\u00a0 Of course, there was no cell phone service available in New York at that time.\u00a0 I called her apartment several times and finally got through and was able to talk with her roommate.\u00a0 She told me that Stephanie had gone into Manhattan that morning for an acting class, but assured me not to worry, that\u00a0the class\u00a0was in \u2018mid-town\u2019, not \u2018down town\u2019 where the bombing had taken place.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t assured.\u00a0 All kinds of scenarios raced through my head placing Stephanie \u2018down town\u2019.\u00a0 As it turned out, she was indeed on a subway to her class in Greenwich Village, which is<\/em> \u2018down town\u2019!<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I continued to call Stephanie\u2019s cell phone even though I realized there was little to no hope of getting through \u2013 I just had to do something!\u00a0 I called her roommate about every 20-30 minutes to ask if she\u2019d heard from her.\u00a0 She had not.\u00a0 I was experiencing this American tragedy in a very personal way.\u00a0 While I was shocked at what I was hearing and watching on television, my overriding concerns were not about who did this to us and why, but rather where is my daughter and is she alright?<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Five agonizingly long hours pass; at 11:30 our phone finally rings.\u00a0 At that time we didn\u2019t have \u2018Caller ID\u2019, so we didn\u2019t know if it was Stephanie or someone calling us to tell us some news we didn\u2019t want to hear.\u00a0 When that familiar, though audibly shaken, voice came on the phone and said, \u201cHi Dad, I\u2019m OK\u201d, I cried and found something to be\u00a0happy about on that tragic day.\u00a0 She later related her experience to me.\u00a0 She was on a subway heading to Greenwich Village that morning, but the subway stopped prior to\u00a0getting there and she was stuck\u00a0underground for about a half an hour before it came to a station\u00a0and she got out.\u00a0 She came up from the subway and saw people standing in the middle of the street staring at the towers of the World Trade Center which were engulfed in smoke.\u00a0 Soon after she\u00a0joined them she saw the first (north) tower collapse.\u00a0 She hurried over to where her acting class was meeting and ended up sitting with the class for several hours, listening to the news and trying to figure out what was going on.\u00a0 She then decided to try to get home.\u00a0 She was fortunate enough to find a cab that would take her only as far as mid-town, where she got out and went to Houston\u2019s, the restaurant where she worked, looking for a familiar face, but found that it was closed.\u00a0 An eerie feeling pervaded mid-town, but it had not turned to panic.\u00a0 She was determined\u00a0to\u00a0get back to her apartment in Queens, but with no public transportation operating, she joined the throngs of people walking out of Manhattan across the Queensboro Bridge.\u00a0 On her way home\u00a0she saw thousands of people already queuing up to give blood.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She was understandably shaken by her proximity to this horrific event,\u00a0and\u00a0when she came home to California for Christmas three months later, she decided to stay.\u00a0 She has returned to New York several times over the last ten years and enjoys all that the \u2018Big Apple\u2019 has to offer, but will never forget that day ten years ago when she witnessed history.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday, September 11, 2011\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By Bob Sparrow \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I was awakened\u00a0by a phone call at around 6:20 a.m. on September 11, 2001.\u00a0 It was my mother-in-law from Minnesota; she asked, \u201cIs Stephanie alright?\u201d\u00a0 I said something like, \u201cI guess so, why?\u201d\u00a0 … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[12,757],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holiday-observations","tag-12","tag-usa-today"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-2G","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}