Some of these close calls are a stretch, but interesting.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — We all know the miraculous story of Flight 1549 — 155 people made it out alive when the US Airways jet made its splash landing into New York’s Hudson River on its way to Charlotte in January.
But for one local woman on board, that survival story is just another notch in her belt. She’s cheated death seven times. She’ survived an avalanche, an earthquake, tsunami warnings even 9-11.
Is it a curse? Not if you ask Maryann Bruce.
Her story goes back to the early 1980s when she was on vacation with her husband. They were newlyweds at the time on a trip to Hawaii.
She remembers swimming in a pool and hearing sirens. It was a tsunami warning that forced everyone at the hotel to evacuate for higher ground. By the time the waves made it to the islands, the storm had weakened.
In 1985, she survived Hurricane Gloria flying through the storm as it made landfall.
In the late 1980s, she came extremely close to an avalanche. Bruce was skiing in Colorado, on the very same slopes where an avalanche happened within minutes of her being there.
“I don’t know why these things happen to me, but I’m just happy that I survive,” Bruce said.
She has survived one historical disaster after another.
“That’s when I started to realize that this is not normal,” Bruce said.
In 1993, she escaped the World Trade Center bombing.
“It was in the middle of the day and all the sudden the building shook,” Bruce said.
She remembers running down 34 flights of stairs in total darkness covered in soot.
On Sept. 11, 2001, she dodged another terrorist attack. She was actually in the air flying from Charlotte to the same airport in Boston where two of the planes were hijacked.
“It was just a recognition that wow, I’ve been around a lot of these,” Bruce said.
Her most recent brush was disaster: the miracle on the Hudson.
Bruce was a passenger on that flight and remembers calling her husband using her cell phone in a raft as the plane sank beside her.
“It just makes you realize how lucky you are,” Bruce said.
And to Bruce, that’s all it is.
“I like to think I have a guardian angel,” Bruce said.
To her, it’s not a curse or a jinx. Just luck.
“We just shake our heads,” Bruce said. “What can you do? I certainly don’t want to live my life in fear.”
definitely weird.
My God..I wonder what all she must have gone through.I shudder to even think of it.
But it's amazing. She really must be lucky or as Sansego said, she must have her mission left to complete on Earth.
Or there's always the theory that we have anywhere from four to seven "exit points" by which our souls can choose to return to the spiritual realm, and her soul always chose to stay on earth to complete her mission, whatever that may be.
hmmmm…or in the right place at the right time…
Well she does seem to be very lucky. Or in the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way, just surviving the Hudson was pretty miraculous.
Interesting story.