Abortion Clinic Blast Fails to Still Nurse's Spirit

By J.R. MOEHRINGER

Jan. 29, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — It destroyed her left eye, damaged her right eye, shredded her legs, ruined her hand, ruptured her eardrum, disfigured her face, embedded her body with rocks and nails and covered her porcelain skin with purple scars and welts and holes, but the bomb couldn’t touch her beauty.

Emily Lyons is still beautiful.

Exactly one year after a bomb went off outside the Birmingham abortion clinic where she was a nurse, Lyons shows that the human body may not be bomb-proof, but the human spirit is. Despite her injuries, and 13 surgeries, she’s regained her radiance. She still suffers severe pain, still faces more surgery, still wishes the FBI would catch the man who did this to her. But today’s one-year anniversary of the millisecond when everything changed forever finds her quick to joke, easy to laugh, full of life.

“We’ve made it through this year,” she says, two thumbs up. “It has to get better.”

Sitting at her dining room table, pulling at a lukewarm slice of pizza, Lyons has come far since her first news conference last March, when she gave the world a rare, raw view of abortion clinic violence. Unlike Robert Sanderson, the off-duty police officer killed in the attack that maimed her, or Dr. Barnett A. Slepian, the abortion provider killed by a sniper last October near Buffalo, N.Y., she lived to show her face and tell her story. And show and tell she’s done, proudly.

“She wants everybody in the world to hear her,” says Michelle Farley, administrator of the New Woman All Women Health Care Clinic, which has reopened since the bombing. “She is walking, talking--thank God, living--proof of what happens when hatred turns into a bomb.”

Painfully shy before the bombing, Lyons has turned into a tirelessly accessible advocate for women’s rights, lending her scarred face last year to a successful campaign against Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), who had voted against beefing up protection for women’s health clinics. She testified this week before the New York Legislature and last summer before Congress. “Somebody has to be out there to tell them and let them see what this has done, and what will continue to be done.”

Her openness stands in contrast to the shadowy existence of Eric Robert Rudolph, the 32-year-old carpenter suspected in the Birmingham attack and three others in the Atlanta area, including at the 1996 Olympic Games. Rudolph is listed among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted, and a task force of roughly 200 federal agents has set up a full-time command post in Andrews, N.C., where he was last seen.

“We’re not leaving,” says Celestine Armstead, spokeswoman for the FBI. “He’s either there or dead. Either way, we’ve got to get him or find the body.”

The search area stretches across 30 square miles of rugged terrain, dense with forest and gridded with abandoned mines and caves. Some cave entrances are no wider in diameter than a tree; but inside, the caves are spacious as warehouses, with fresh running water and constant temperatures near 60 degrees.

Then, there’s always the possibility that someone is giving Rudolph shelter, since the region is home to anti-government fringe groups and residents have never looked kindly upon the federal government. Some openly describe Rudolph as a folk hero.

When Lyons sees such people on TV, she groans with rage.

“The mentality is just hard to understand,” she says. “Somebody accused in four bombings, two killings--and then the 150 or 160 of us . . . hurt. How can you think he’s a hero?”

Much as she tries not to think of Rudolph at all, he comes into her head after each surgery, particularly the last one, when she sat for seven hours while doctors probed her empty eye socket, filled it with cold gel, then fitted and refitted it with a prosthetic blue eye.

“All I could think of was, ‘Rudolph did this to me,’ ” she says. “The only reason I’m sitting in this chair and having this done to me is because he did it to me. This is another person, who intentionally stood somewhere, and watched me, and pushed a button.”

What little she remembers of that moment, the FBI has asked her not to share.

It was one week after the 25th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made abortion legal. She walked up the front steps of the clinic about 7:30 a.m. Protesters had maintained a presence for weeks, and threats had been made, but Lyons believed in what she did for a living. “It was the right place to be,” she says. “But it was the wrong time.”

As she reached the doors, the bomb blew, spewing nails and bits of metal toward her at 6,000 feet per second. Windows shattered. The ground became a crater. Sanderson, about 20 feet away, flew backward and died where he fell.

“The last thing I remember is New Year’s Eve,” she says. “The next thing I remember is the middle of February.”

Lyons lost more than her memory. A trained pianist, she can no longer maneuver her hands up and down the keyboard. With two fingers permanently limp, she can no longer write. “I can sign my name,” she says meekly.

The pupil of her remaining eye is badly damaged, and a contact lens only does so much, so needlework is out, along with reading. She used to tear through novels and thrillers. Now, after a few pages, everything goes white.

But her one good eye works well enough to see her two teenage daughters, and for that she is grateful, and it works well enough to see the love of her life, Jeff. College sweethearts, Lyons and Jeff drifted apart and married others before reuniting and marrying in 1994. They were blissful--”soul mates,” she says--until he found himself beside her hospital bed, barely recognizing her.

“Girl,” he whispered, “what have they done to you?”

Later that night, when her left hand moved, he gave it a squeeze. And he hasn’t let go since.

A police officer removed Lyons’ wedding ring just after the bombing because her hand was beginning to swell. It was the first time the ring had been off her finger, so last April, Jeff put it back on, in a quiet ceremony at which they renewed their vows.

“I knew he was smitten,” she says, suddenly shy. “But the depth of that you don’t have any concept of until this has happened. He’s put up with all this. He’s handled the media when I couldn’t. He’s lifted me up on the bedside commode, then back in bed. Lifted me out of the hot tub when I couldn’t. He’s the one who does my makeup for me when I have to wear it. I can’t see to do it myself.”

She pauses. A dark anger clouds her eye. Then the true color returns, the life comes back to that beautiful face.

“Somebody has to love you a hell of a lot,” she says, “to do all that.”

Times researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.