Emily Lyons came face to face with a bomb 25 years ago that damaged her life, body and career.
She was a nurse in 1998 when the New Woman All Women Health Care clinic in Birmingham was bombed that killed a security guard.
She was only about 12 feet away from the bomb when it went off.
She opened up to me about what life has been like over the past 25 years.
She said, “It’s not a chore but it’s been a journey that nobody should ever have to go through.”
The mother and wife has constant reminders from that day, like parts of steel nails that are still in her body.
Lyons has a prosthetic eye and has fears of falling.
She is also worried about losing what’s left of her vison.
Now 25 years and around fifty surgeries later, she said humor has gotten her and her husband through to today.
She and Jeffery have been married 29 years.
She said, “and even in the hospital we had the humor, Jeffery was thinking about getting a book and I said, yes what do you think the title will be, I said, ‘Life has been a blast.”
The couple published a book in 2005 under a similar title named “Life’s Been a Blast.”
The man behind her pain and behind bars for the bombing is Eric Robert Rudolph.
“I see Rudolph in my face every day I have to go to the mirror to put my contact in or do the stuff for my nose. So, he is never far from my mind. I don’t dwell on him every day, but I know, I get up, I start hurting, the only reason is because of him” she said.
Lyons became a big activist for women’s reproductive rights after the bombing.
A fight she hopes to see continue even after the clinic closed around a decade ago and after the overturning of Roe vs Wade.
A parking lot now stands in place of the clinic.
“My life, I mean my life with Jeffery that is my life, but it is seclusion” she said,
Rudolph is serving life sentences for the 1998 bombing and deadly 1996 Olympic bombings in Atlanta.
He’s at Florence Admax Penitentiary in Colorado which is labeled as the most secure federal prison in the nation.
Rudolph has made court appeals but with no success.
Lyons hopes he stays behind bars.
