79th floor, down the side of the building and inside through hallways and stairwells all the way down to the 75th floor. One of the engines, and part of the landing gear, went through the building, tearing a hole 18 by 20 feet, and emerged on the 33rd street side, crashing through the roof of a building on the other side of that street, and starting a fire. That was the one we saw at first.
     Unaware that the plane's other engine and parts of its landing gear had fallen through the elevator shaft, severing the hoist and governor cables and weakening the ropes to other cars, rescue workers used elevators to transport casualties.
     Betty Lou Oliver was a pretty elevator operator I would greet each day. She was retiring that day, because her husband was just returning home from the Navy.
     As the plane hit, Betty Lou was blown out other post on the 80th floor and into the hall, badly burned.
     After receiving first aid, she was put in another car to go down to an ambulance. As the elevator doors' closed, rescue workers heard what sounded like a gunshot but what was, in fact, the snapping of elevator cables weakened by the crash. The car, with 		Betty Lou inside, went into a free fall, plunging 1,000 feet to the sub-basement.
     A 17-year-old Coast Guardsman, Donald Molony, and others, rushed to help Betty Lou. The Coast Guardsman scrambled down the shaft, into a mass of rubble, brick, cables and steel around the elevator car. Betty Lou had broken both legs and her back, but she recovered from her injuries in only eight months.
     As Joan and I went over to look at the engine on 33rd Street, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia came over to us to ask how we were, and congratulated us on our survival. As we turned to go, my boss pushed his way through the crowd and approached me.
     "You ought to come in next Saturday because you didn't even work two hours today," he said, oblivious to my disheveled appearance, and the fact that I had my arm in a sling and traces of debris still on my clothes and face.
     "What a grump," I thought, "With all these people applauding us, he's punishing me for surviving! How insensitive!" Joan and I turned, climbed over the rope that partitioned off the building, and limped our way down the street to the BMT subway so we could get back to Brooklyn.
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