Wednesday, September 26, 2001
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Wednesday, September 26, 2001 |
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'All we could do was wait' Mother tells miraculous story of survival
By MONROE
ROARK
Amid the thousands of tragic personal stories that have surfaced during the past two weeks from the rubble of the World Trade Center in New York, there are hundreds of stories with happy endings, even miracle endings. Judith Erven's story is one of the happy ones. A special education teacher at Whitewater Middle School, she was sick at home Sept. 11 and watching a morning news show when she heard about an airliner hitting the first tower. Since her son, Jim, works in the other tower, that got her immediate attention. She called her daughter Amanda, a student at the University of Georgia, and they were talking on the phone when they saw the second tower struck. That changed everything. "All we could do was wait," Amanda later wrote in an e-mail to friends and family that her mother forwarded to The Citizen. "We all watched as those amazing 110-story buildings crumbled to the ground. "At 10:36 a.m. my phone rang. Faintly I heard the voice on the line 'Mandy ... Mandy ...' my heart stopped. Never in my life have I felt such joy. My brother had made it out." Jim, an assistant vice president in the bond department at Morgan Stanley, worked on the 70th floor of the second tower. Ironically, he was also on the job when the towers were bombed in 1993, and everyone walked down the stairs to safety. This time was a bit different. Workers in his office heard a sort of sonic boom, like a plane flying too close, when the first tower was hit. Then they saw papers flying outside their windows as they were evacuated. Time for one more trip down the stairs. At about the 45th floor, word came that everything seemed to be all right, and some were even told to return to their offices. According to his mother, Jim and an associate looked at each other and said, "I don't think so." They kept going down. About two floors later, they were thrown against the walls and the entire building shook as if a massive earthquake had hit Manhattan. "They thought they were goners," Judith said. Jim and his associate hurried down the stairs and raced to the subway, which took them from the southern end of Manhattan to Morgan Stanley's midtown offices. There they were greeted by stunned looks on the faces of their coworkers. That was when they found out that their tower had collapsed approximately six minutes after they got out. While the entire family rejoices in Jim's survival, his mother says he is not ready to leave New York. Morgan Stanley was very fortunate only 14 are still missing out of some 3,500 employees, and only one that Jim knew personally has not been accounted for. Meanwhile, everyone has gone back to work and is trying to achieve some type of normalcy. Morgan Stanley had a big warehouse in Jersey City set up for a possible Y2K crisis that never happened, so that has become the firm's regular office. Jim now takes the train there every day from his home on 39th Street. Life in New York City is something he always wanted to try, his mother said. After finishing high school across the state in Jamestown, N.Y., he graduated from Baylor University in Texas and lived with his mother in Florida for a year before deciding that it was time to go for it. "He's an all-American boy living an all-American dream," Judith said, adding that Amanda has "always seen New York as glamorous," partly because of her close relationship with her brother. After moving here in 1994, Judith taught at Fayette Middle School for five years before moving to Whitewater. Amanda graduated eighth in her class at Fayette County High in 1999. The terrorist attacks have been a constant source of discussion in all classes at the middle school, and Judith has been able to offer a unique perspective to inquiring students, many of whom have their own personal connections to the tragedy. After a nerve-wracking two hours where she thought she might never see her son again, Judith Erven now looks forward to the holidays and the prospect of Jim coming for a visit. Amanda flew north last weekend for a reunion with her brother. All of them are counting their blessings. "You don't think something like this will ever happen," Judith said. "It'll affect everybody for a long time. Everybody is in some way connected."
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