The People Behind the Pages
Reunited after more than 50 years
I was ten when some of these people helped save my life.
In September 2026, I saw them again after more than 50 years. By then, I’d written a book about the accident and the life that followed. Now I could stand beside people I’d spent so much time writing about.
Each of them has a place in AFTER SURVIVAL: A Memoir of Choice, Consequence, and the Life That Followed. Here, I’d like you to meet them.
AFTER SURVIVAL
The People Behind the Pages
Reunited after more than 50 years.
I was ten when some of these people helped save my life.
In September 2026, I saw them again after more than 50 years. By then, I’d written a book about the accident and the life that followed. Now I could stand beside people I’d spent so much time writing about.
Each of them has a place in AFTER SURVIVAL: A Memoir of Choice, Consequence, and the Life That Followed. Here, I’d like you to meet them.
Danny Antonino
The friend who found me
Danny was my childhood best friend and the first person to find me after the accident in 1975.
We were just kids. He wrote his own account of what happened, and that perspective is included in the memoir. His words let me share that day through the eyes of the friend who found me.
In this photograph, he’s holding the finished book. The friend who was there at the beginning now holds the story of the life that followed.
Dan & Mable Antonino
A steady voice and a difficult warning
Danny’s dad, Dan, held me at the waist after the accident. He kept talking to me, helping me stay calm and awake. I was a frightened child, and he stayed with me through those moments.
Mable’s part in the memoir reaches into a very different chapter of my life. A retired nurse, she warned Randi and me that caring for my mother could cost us our marriage.
It nearly did.
Her warning belongs in this story because the years after survival brought challenges of their own. Loving someone and taking responsibility for their care could ask more of us than we understood.
Gloria Smith
A second mom to Michelle and me
Gloria is the woman who pulled me off the rebar.
To understand what she means to me, you also need to know about her couch. When our parents stayed out too late, my sister, Michelle, and I often slept there. Gloria was a second mom to both of us.
Her place in my life holds all of that: the woman who acted when I needed help after the accident, and the woman who made room for two children who needed somewhere to be.
Standing beside her again brought those parts of my life together in a way a photograph can only begin to show.
Dr. Donald J. Dombrowski
One of the first surgeons to care for me
Dr. Dombrowski was one of the first surgeons to attend to my care after the accident in 1975. His words appear throughout the memoir.
Writing the book gave me a way to include his perspective alongside my own. Seeing him again gave me something different: a chance to stand beside a man whose care is part of the reason there was a life afterward to write about.
When I look at this photograph, I think about the years I got to live, the people I got to love, and how much followed those first days.
More than 50 years later, thank you.
I’m grateful we had the chance to stand together again.
Between the accident in 1975 and these photographs lies so much of my life. Seeing these faces again brought those years close.
Danny, Dan, Mable, Gloria, and Dr. Dombrowski each have a place in my memoir because each has a place in my life. Their friendship, care, and honesty are part of the story I wanted to tell.
This page is my way of honoring them, sharing what they mean to me, and saying thank you.