{"id":4258,"date":"2009-01-09T10:23:40","date_gmt":"2009-01-09T15:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=4258"},"modified":"2009-01-09T10:23:40","modified_gmt":"2009-01-09T15:23:40","slug":"today_would_have_been_stephen_baltzs_60th_birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2009\/01\/today_would_have_been_stephen_baltzs_60th_birthday.html","title":{"rendered":"Today Would Have Been Stephen Baltz’s 60th Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"

That is, had Baltz lived on beyond a miraculous 26 hours after initially surviving the 1960 United Airlines-TWA plane crash over Staten Island and Brooklyn<\/a>:<\/p>\n

On Dec. 16, 1960, 11-year-old Stephen Lambert Baltz became the sole survivor of the horrific midair crash of a United Airlines jet and a TWA plane over Staten Island near Miller Army Field. <\/p>\n

Millions of today’s baby boomers and their parents prayed and hoped against hope that the boy from Wilmette, Ill., would survive. <\/p>\n

But despite the best efforts of 10 doctors, he succumbed to his injuries after 26 hours. <\/p>\n

Had he lived, Stephen Baltz would be celebrating his 60th birthday today, Jan. 9, 2009. <\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

Surviving the crash was Stephen’s 65 cents found in his clothing or wallet; his father put the coins in a charity box at the hospital. The fire-tinged collection of four dimes and five nickels remains in a memorial plaque displayed to this day at Methodist Hospital. <\/p>\n

A $1,000 anonymous donation from an elderly lady and $38 from a chaplain on duty at the hospital on Dec. 17 were combined with other donations to begin funding a pediatrics section at Methodist to honor Stephen’s memory.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article catches up with some of the remaining family — his sister and brother — as well as one of the nurses on duty. (Advance, use permalinks! This is an interesting story!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That is, had Baltz lived on beyond a miraculous 26 hours after initially surviving the 1960 United Airlines-TWA plane crash over Staten Island and Brooklyn: On Dec. 16, 1960, 11-year-old Stephen Lambert Baltz became the sole survivor of the horrific midair crash of a United Airlines jet and a TWA plane over Staten Island near […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,30,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brooklyn","category-historical","category-staten_island"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4259,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4258\/revisions\/4259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}