“My experience from the first disaster was that it’s a strangely happy moment when you know that you’ve survived,” Bruce Stephan says. (At least one other couple, elevator operators Arturo and Carmen Griffith, also survived their story inspired a recent film, “Lovebirds of the Twin Towers.”) Had Joan been caught in the collapse? Hours later, he finally learned that she was OK. Then the south tower fell, and Stephan’s fear spiked anew. Unable to reach her by cell phone, Bruce Stephan dashed to a payphone and called her relatives, who told him she’d gotten out. Only after his roughly hourlong walk down the crowded stairs did Stephan learn that another plane had hit the south tower - the building where his wife, Joan, also an attorney, worked on the 91st floor. Twelve years later, the engineer and lawyer was settling into his workday on the 65th floor of the trade center’s north tower when one of the planes crashed about 30 stories above. In 1989, his car got perilously wedged on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit and the upper deck collapsed while he was driving across. It wasn’t Bruce Stephan’s first incredibly close call. “One of the things that I learned,” Jimeno says, “is to never give up.” But they also say they have gained resilience, purpose, appreciation and resolve. Some grapple with their place in a tragedy defined by an enormous loss of life. 11 survivors bear scars and the weight of unanswerable questions.
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