Feb. 3, 1959, is known as "The Day the Music Died" because rock 'n' rollers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson were killed in a plane crash in Iowa.
Joan Zeller, now 80 and living in Warwick, was also in a plane crash that day.
Then 22, Zeller was a stewardess on American Airlines Flight 320, which crashed into the East River of New York City, broke in half and exploded, killing 65 people. Of the seven who survived, she was the only woman.
Fifty years later, Zeller, who grew up in East Providence and became the 1961 Miss Rhode Island USA, was working on a book about the crash when the TV in the other room said a commercial jet was about to land in the Hudson River. It was Jan. 15, 2009.
"I ran from my computer room to my living room," she said Saturday. She watched the rescue after Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger landed the U.S. Airways Airbus A320 safely in the river with 155 people aboard. "I cried for every one of those people," she said. "I was praying. It was as if I was there."
Everyone survived.
"The fact that he got everyone out ... I was hysterical. It was relief, really. It triggered something. It triggered an emotion I didn't know I had."
The Miracle on the Hudson became the 2016 movie "Sully," which Zeller saw with a friend. "I cried from the beginning to the end," she said.
Zeller's self-published book, "Angel on the Wing," came out last summer, and the publicist hired by her printer is beginning to promote it locally. Her account is gripping, if the opening pages that are available for free on Amazon.com are any indication.
The crash broke ribs and her pelvis, ruptured four discs in her neck and tore her bladder. As she floated in and out of consciousness, a passenger held her head above water until they were rescued by a tugboat.
"I was pronounced dead in the hospital," she said. "I was alive ... I had lost so much blood, I was catatonic."
She wrote about hearing the voices that said: "No blood pressure," "I don't get any pulse," and "We lost her," and about feeling the blood pressure cuffs being removed and the sheet being pulled over her head.
"I felt the nurse or orderly or whoever it was push my gurney up against a wall," she said Saturday. "I'm internally screaming, 'I'm not dead!' "
The book recounts her out-of-body experience and how re-entering her body caused it to jump, alerting hospital staff that she was alive.
She was in the hospital for six weeks. She assumed she'd been the only one hurt until the tugboat captains who rescued her visited. They told about the horrific scene of bodies floating in the river.
Her parents took her home to Rhode Island, where she eventually regained her ability to walk.
She worked as a fashion coordinator for the Outlet Co. and had some screen time on Jay Kroll's show on WJAR-TV, as, in her words, "the girl who answered the phone."
She became the 1961 Miss Rhode Island USA and one of 10 finalists for top title.
She worked as a model in Providence and Boston. As part of her modeling career, she was featured on billboards as the "cheerleader" for the Boston Patriots.
Although she was not allowed to resume her career as a stewardess, "I have absolutely no fear of flying," she said.
As a model, she was sometimes hired to give fashion shows on commercial flights between Boston and Miami.
Her next career was in the jewelry business, requiring her to fly to places such as Japan and Korea. She staged jewelry fashion shows and found designs in precious metals that could be adapted to costume jewelry.
With the demise of the jewelry industry in Rhode Island, she became a real-estate agent, retiring from that after 19 years.
Zeller said her book was inspired by comments on gendisasters.com, where she found that descendants of the people aboard American Airlines Flight 320 were still hungry for information.
She wanted to answer the unknowns, and fill in the blanks about the people they lost.
One survivor was Bobby Sullivan, 8. He lost his mother, father and two sisters. He has since become a grandfather.
Because of Zeller's book, his descendants know about the last minutes of his mother's life, when she clung to the wreckage with Zeller.
— dnaylor@providencejournal.com
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On Twitter: @donita22