On the morning of January 29th, 1998, a terrorist bombed the New Woman All Women Health Care Clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, killing a police officer and severely injuring a nurse. Both victims risked their own safety to show up for others—despite having different beliefs—and will forever be linked by the same act of political violence.
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Released on October 29, 2024.
Archival: (Sirens) Well it’s a massive scene, I mean, police everywhere, fire everywhere and a building that is looking to me to have been bombed. Windows are shattered and the awning is torn and ripped apart.
JM: On the morning of January 29th, 1998, a terrorist set off a homemade bomb filled with nails and gravel… at a women’s health center in Birmingham, Alabama. It was one of the few clinics that provided abortions in the state.
ARCHIVAL: One of the nurses who was actually on her way into the clinic and she has been injured. I just saw a body come out…
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JM: That nurse was Emily Lyons.
Emily Lyons (EL): I thought I’d have a boring life. (Laughs)
Jeff Lyons (JL): When we married, we were just, for lack of a better word, nobodies. And then all of a sudden, we were on the morning shows and newspapers and everything else.
MG: Emily survived… with lifelong injuries…and the clinic reopened shortly after in another location. But one person did die in the bombing… a police officer who was working security at the clinic – Robert Sanderson, known to everyone as Sande.
JM: He was the first person to be killed in an abortion clinic bombing in the US… and his beliefs on the issue might not be what you expect.
EL: He never talked about his views at work, but I’m pretty sure it was after the bomb that I learned that he and his wife were not pro-choice.
MG: This season is called Stepping Up…and in this episode… the story of two people who for different reasons risked their own safety to show up for others.
JM: …but whose lives became permanently linked by the same act of political violence.
I’m Jasmyn Morris.
MG: And I’m Michael Garofalo. It’s the StoryCorps podcast from NPR.
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JM: Emily Lyons grew up in Montgomery, Alabama in the 60s. Her parents were strict Southern Baptists… so she spent most of her childhood in church. Her first job was playing piano at church functions and weddings. But at StoryCorps, she told her husband, Jeff, that even back then… there was only one profession she ever really thought about.
EL: I either wanted to be a nurse or a doctor, but I knew my parents couldn’t afford tuition for med school. So being a nurse was the next thing in line.
JL: The only thing that I’ve ever really heard you say that you wanted to do was something in the medical field, I mean you never wanted to build bridges or be a rockstar. Is that a fair statement?
EL: That’s a quite fair statement because I can’t sing and I don’t think I could build anything. Nursing was the right thing for me to do, but my field of interest was labor and delivery.
JL: You said on more than one occasion you were there and the mother was there and the delivery happened before the doctor arrived. So you brought a lot of people into this world.
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JL: Your last part of your career, you went to work at a clinic that provided reproductive services. Tell me a little bit about how you wound up working there.
EL: When we got married I’d been out of work for almost 9 months. That was the most time I’d ever been without working as a nurse. So I picked up the newspaper and there was an ad for a nurse part time at a doctor’s office. And I thought well, that sounds pretty good. So I went for an interview and one of the first questions that lady asked me was ‘How do you feel about abortion?’ And I said, ‘I have no problem with it.’
I didn’t know about the risk when I got the job. When I went to work the first day, I was wondering why there was protesters standing out on the street screaming at me as I was driving in. It was a rude awakening for me.
MG: Emily quickly became head nurse at the New Woman All Women Health Care Clinic… where she worked directly with the people who came there for help.
EL: It did start as just a job, but you saw those women every day. You heard about what they had gone through, the reason for them being there, so as time went by, it wasn’t just a job.
JL: How old was your youngest patient?
EL: The youngest patient I ever had was 10 years old. As I was speaking with her, she didn’t know how she was pregnant. Nobody had taught her anything. And that’s kind of heartbreaking because I had children that age at that point, and my kids knew.
And I can remember the day a woman was about halfway down the hall before they went out the side door to go home, took my hand and she just, you know, squeezed it and said, “Thank you.” She didn’t need to tell me anything else. That made you know that it was all worthwhile.
But one day I went to work pretty much like any other day. And a patient and her father pointed at something over in the yard and, he said, “What is that?” And Sande, the police officer, looked over. He took out his nightstick and started to go through to the bomb. Well, Eric Rudolph, the terrorist, was standing across the street, so he pushed the button, and watched the destruction that he did to Sande and myself.
JL: The police officer, Sande, was murdered. And when I walked into the hospital, I didn’t recognize you, it was that bad. I thought I was in the wrong room.
At some point I had to contact our daughters. The first thing that I said to them was there was a very real possibility that you might die. And I told them that, when they did see you, this would be the worst thing that they had ever seen, but to keep in mind that that was still their mother. Your injuries were, one word would be, devastating.
EL: For over a year I couldn’t see. I couldn’t walk. Clumps of hair just came out.
JL: I remember I did finally go by the clinic, and it was very clear that the bomb was aimed at the front door. And there was no doubt where you were standing; I could actually see the outline of a person because the nails that shot out from the bomb were in you instead of in the building.
How many operations have you had so far?
EL: As of this year, there have been 57. Every day that I get up, it’s an effort to get out of bed: the stiff joints caused from nail damage, cartilage damage in my knees.
JL: Your body was just shot full of nails. I, I’ve even watched you do what we call our party trick. You can take a, a strong magnet and it will stick to various places on you because there’s still a nail that’s embedded under there.
EL: And this is not the face I had 30 years ago, so I can’t ever forget about Rudolph because I see him every day when I look in the mirror. But scars just tell people that you were stronger than those who tried to hurt you.
You know, there were emails that I eventually saw from people that say I should have died that day. ’You’re going to burn in a lake of fire.’ And my comment for that was, ‘Well, I’ve already been in a lake of fire, and I’m not going back.’
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EL: You know, life knocks everybody down, but what matters is how you stand up, and we have stood up together. You had to take me everywhere. You have kept me grounded. You have been my lifeline.
JL: I feel that I had the easy part. You stood 12 feet in front of a bomb and you survived. So you’re the superhero, I’m the sidekick, and I am so honored that I get that privilege.
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JM: For years afterward… whenever it would rain… blue and pink fibers would come out of the ground where the bomb went off. The pink were from Emily’s scrubs… the blue… from the officer’s uniform.
MG: We’ll learn more about that police officer after a quick break. Stay with us…
JL: Sande saved the person that is most important to me and yet I never met him.
MG: Sande was a Birmingham city police officer, moonlighting as a security guard at the clinic, to help support his family. He was 34 years old when he was killed… and left behind his wife, Felicia, and two children.
EL: Sande was very mild-mannered, courteous. He knew he had a job to do the days that he came to the clinic to provide security. It didn’t matter to him why you were there. He was not judgmental. He was there to protect us. And yes, indeed, on that day, his body did protect me.
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EL: I know Felicia came to see me in the hospital. I couldn’t see, so I don’t know, particularly, what she looked like. And of course with all the drugs that I’ve had, I don’t remember anything from that visit.
JL: Well, the first time that I met her was at her husband’s funeral.
Archival:
<TAPS> Each brave step he took towards that hellish device are steps and seconds that all of us and thousands more owe back to him tenfold. May he rest in peace.
JL: The look in her eyes redefined the word despair. That was just so painful that I, I felt physically ill. We did talk some. And on that day, Felicia smiled once and that was when I told her that there was some chance that Emily would see again.
I remember one of the surgeons during one of our sit down meetings about patient status, she said, ‘Well, we’re going to go evaluate Emily to see how… what her level of disability will be.’ And I said ‘Okay,’ and she said, ‘Wow, you took that quite well.’ That was right after I had been to Officer Sanderson’s funeral. And the thing is, I knew you and I would have a difficult road ahead of us, but that we would have a road ahead of us. And that I feel was a gift by Sande. And so that’s part of why I think it’s so important that we enjoy our lives.
I have nothing but compassion and respect for Felicia. Her husband is why Emily and I have a life together.
JM: The terrorist, Eric Rudolph, who killed Sande and injured Emily that day…spent five years on the run. Eventually… he was captured and convicted for a series of bombings across the Southern US, including at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
MG: He also confessed to bombing an abortion clinic and a gay bar in Georgia in 1997. In all, he killed two people and injured more than 100 others.
JM: He is serving four consecutive life terms in prison… without the possibility of parole.
JL: I recall when you and I went to his sentencing in Atlanta, there was a long line there, and it was almost time for it to start, and I asked one of the officers, I said, ‘Is there a separate victim’s line?’ and they said, ‘Yes, it’s that one.’ So that line with over a hundred people in it, all of those were Eric’s victims.
MG: Emily has since testified before Congress to advocate for clinic workers and patients’ protection…. and she and Jeff wrote a book about their life together.
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EL: I don’t know what happened during that bomb, but it sure flipped a switch in my brain because not much intimidates you once you’ve been blown up. After that day, I wasn’t afraid to speak out. I wanted people to know and to see what he had done to me.
JM: Sande’s widow… Felicia hasn’t done many interviews since he was murdered… but in one she said this:
It’s very hard for me to see Emily. I want so much to give her her life back. I want Sande back. She’s a kind, sweet person. She has to live every day with what Eric Rudolph did to her. I have to live every day without Sande. Our lives are forever changed. That’s something we have in common. We may have different views on certain issues; we agree to disagree. It doesn’t change the way I feel about her.
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MG: This episode was produced by Jasmyn Morris. Our Senior Producer is Jud Esty-Kendall. Max Jungreis is our Producer.
JM: Our Technical Director is Jarrett Floyd. Amy Drozdowska is our Executive Producer. And our fact checker is Katie Scott.
MG: The art for this season was created by Liz McCarty… and special thanks to Alan Jinich.
JM: As always… we’d love to hear from you. Our question for this week is: How has your life been different than you expected? Was there a moment that changed everything for you? Tell us about it on our voicemail line… 702-706-TALK.
MG: The number again is 702-706-T-A-L-K. Or send an email to podcast AT storycorps DOT org.
JM: Next week…
TEASE:
Leigh Ann: So Erin, what’s something that you will take away from this experience?
Erin: People have more in common than they ever really want to believe. You just have to understand the person’s perspective.
Leigh Ann: And be brave…
Erin: Yes.
Leigh Ann: …brave enough to ask and brave enough to look.
MG: I’m Michael Garofalo.
JM: And I’m Jasmyn Morris. Thanks for listening…
On this episode, we dig into the StoryCorps archive to mark the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing through the voices of people who were there that day.
