StoryCorps: The luckiest man in San Francisco

Bruce Stephan is probably the luckiest San Franciscan alive. He happened to be driving across the Bay Bridge on October 17, 1989, the very moment the Loma Prieta earthquake snapped the upper deck.

As if that weren't enough, fast forward barely a dozen years, to September 11, 2001: Stephan was in his hometown, New York City, working as an engineer on the 65th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. His wife Joan was on the 91^st floor of the other tower. In today’s StoryCorps, Stephan talks with Joan about how they both survived those disasters. He starts with the moment on September.

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BRUCE STEPHAN: So, when I got downstairs, it took probably about over an hour. I went over to one of the rescue workers and I asked him what had happened. And I asked at about the other building because Joan was in the other building, and I sort of had these vague thoughts in my head, and his face ... just sort of indicated something happened to it without saying, and I didn't even want to know, what might've happened or anything like that. And he said it was two planes. And I knew right away, that moment, that it was a terrorist attack. And then he took my focus away by asking if he could use my phone and try to call his family. And he couldn't, he couldn't get through, I couldn't get through, no one could really get through the cell phones or anything like that.

He then looked at me and he showed me his name on a thing that he had on his arm, and he said, "Remember my name. If I don't make it outta here, please tell my family where I was and that I love them." And that's when I realized they were really worried about the building falling down, and that we might not make it out. And maybe the other building fell already, I didn't know what had happened.

Thank goodness.

And so, I walked a couple of blocks trying to find a phone because we had been in the Loma Prieta earthquake when it hit here in San Francisco at the time. And we connected with each other by calling to come in places and stuff like that. So I wanted to call her mother's house and I wanted to find out if she had called it and if she was okay. So, I walked and I walked and I walked, and I finally found a Jewish synagogue. The door was open, I called Joan's house, I dialed a few times and eventually I did get through. And I remember the first words I said were, "At least one of us made it out alive." And they said, "Oh! Joan called a half-hour ago! She's fine!" And I said, "Oh my god." I collapsed on the floor, I couldn't believe it, that she was okay.

Remember Loma Prieta? You sat in the twenty-first floor of your building, looking out the window at everybody and said, "I'm not going outside. I'm going to stay right here where it's safe." And you didn't move right away, and had you done that on 9/11, you would not have gotten out of that building.

So I was on the upper deck of the Bay Bridge, and it collapsed right out from underneath me, and I plummeted from the upper deck through the lower deck. I was staring down at the water. I had no idea why the car had stopped – I had been driving about 40 or 50 miles an hour before that. I just climbed out the window, took my seatbelt off, climbed out the window out into the hood of the car. Had my hand on the lower roadway, which was about four or five feet above my head. And then had to walk a mile and a half off of the Bay Bridge and onto Treasure Island, and then I was there til four in the morning or so. When they got an ambulance and took me to the mainland, not knowing whether that section was intact or not.

As I was dropping, my thought was that, "Wow, I'm not quite ready for this. I'm going to miss school! I didn't say goodbye to Joan!" You know, all these various things go through your head, but they weren't bad feelings. It didn't feel horrible to be dying, it was just that time had passed and my time had come and I wasn't quite ready for it.

After having both experiences happen to me, I felt like there had to be something special about me and Joan as people that we survived these two things, that we were being saved for something special, and I kept trying to do something better than just be nice to one person. You know, being nice to everybody, somehow do something magic, and I hope I still get that opportunity do that.

Bruce Stephan spoke with his wife, Joan Stephan, in the StoryCorps booth at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Click here for more information on how you can be part of StoryCorps.

This story originally aired on December 6, 2010.

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After we heard Bruce's story, we thought it would be nice to catch up with the man we here at Crosscurrents like to call "the luckiest man in San Francisco." So KALW's Seth Samuel called him up.

BRUCE STEPHAN [by phone]: After 9/11, we had made the decision that we wanted to have a major lifestyle change. And we, within one month, had moved out of New York, moved to a small town in upstate New York, and we lived up there for seven years. And neither of us really cared whether, you know, our jobs fired us or not. She worked for a year and then they laid her off after a year. She could either go to New Jersey and report to work or get laid off, so she took the lay off. And my company let me continue to work but I commuted back and forth to the city on a weekly basis.

And we really did change our lives then. We moved to a small town that had a real community, and we became part of that community, we joined boards, we contributed to causes. My wife was the head of the planning board, I was on the boards of like a film society and she was on the boards of hospitals and stuff. So in a little town everybody pulls together and we really felt we were helping people.

But, you know, it was a bit of a strain driving back and forth to New York City constantly, it was a five hour drive each way. And, you know, it just became too much, and we said, "Well, we gotta go where there are real jobs," and everything, so we moved out to the Bay Area.

So I guess another reason I don't feel like the luckiest man alive is that when we made the dramatic thing to change our lives, we did it but then we didn't carry all the way through with it and we're back in the working world and we haven't had much chance todo that much about it.

I think the only significant thing that I did do differently was I did start going to church again. I had not been going to church for twenty years. And you know, after 9/11 I started going back to church, and I do serve at the church, you know, up at the altar and stuff, carry the cross up, work with the priest, and help in those small ways, and of course donate money to the right causes and stuff. But other than just paying money, I haven't been able to throw myself into something interesting and free myself from my previous life.

Hear an extended version of this follow up interview with Bruce Stephan in this web exclusive.