Accident Victim on Long, Hard Road, but She’ll Walk

--Brigitte Gerney, facing a “long and hard road” to regain use of her legs, recalled that her greatest worry when she was trapped beneath a 35-ton crane was that her children would become orphans. “I thought I was dying. I thought nobody could get me out,” Gerney said at a Bellevue Hospital news conference--her first contact with the media since the accident at a New York East Side construction site May 30. She recalled insisting that a police officer relay this final message to her children, ages 11 and 14: “Tell my children that . . . their mommy loved them very much and that wherever they are in life . . . they should never forget the great love their mother had for them. And in any situation, that should carry them through.” Gerney, a 49-year-old native of Switzerland and resident of Manhattan, underwent a series of operations in the days immediately after the accident. More operations are in store, but Dr. Daniel Baker said she could be released from the hospital as early as a month from now. Her progress has been “remarkable,” he said, and though she may never walk as well as she did before the accident, she will walk after months of therapy.

--When entertainer Tony Bennett, 58, testified on Capitol Hill, he did it the way he knows best: He sang his audience a couple of songs. Bennett appeared before the House Banking Committee’s coinage panel to promote passage of a resolution that would award congressional gold medals to American composers George and Ira Gershwin, whom he knew. Bennett grabbed a microphone set up near a piano in the hearing room and launched into singing “Our Love Is Here to Stay” and “Who’s Got the Last Laugh Now?” The House banking subcommittee then passed the resolution unanimously and forwarded it to the full Banking Committee, which is expected to follow suit and send it to the House floor.

--Rosa Beyer wanted one thing in particular for her 106th birthday. “All I care is that we go out and dance. I want to celebrate,” Beyer said at a party in her honor at the Colerain Township Senior Citizens Center, where she received birthday greetings from President and Mrs. Reagan. Beyer is a celebrity on Cincinnati’s west side, where her family has operated a home-grown vegetable stand for many years. Last year she was grand marshal of a local parade. Although she has cut back on her activities, Beyer said she is not ready to join what she calls the “can’t” club. “I figure it this way: I’ve lived this long because God has something he wants me to do, and I haven’t done it yet,” she said. “But you know what? Even if I knew what it was he wanted, I think I’d wait a couple of years yet to do it.”