Inbox: article in this week's paper

From: Amy Miller
To: [4th grade class list]
Subject: article in this week’s paper

Hi everybody,

It’s been a while since anyone’s done something that I thought you guys would be interested in seeing. After the big 10th anniversary commemoration last year I know I was glad that the media’s been quiet for a while. (I only heard from Brook, but I’m sure she’s not the only one who decided to spend that whole day in bed with a few paperbacks. I wish I could have done the same!) But with my book coming out in two months, a local reporter wanted to get the scoop early and put together this article about me. I won’t send anything else along until after the book shows up in stores, but I thought you might be interested. It’s a quick read.

Be safe, be happy,
Amy/Mrs. Miller



Almost eleven years have passed since the day that Amy Miller, then a teacher in a private Midtown Manhattan elementary school, risked her life to save her fourth grade class from minions of the Fireshield Maestro during the infamous two-week siege of New York City.

At the time of the siege, Mrs. Miller was in her mid-twenties, married, newly graduated from Teachers College and—though she didn’t know it yet—pregnant with her first child. She had only just become accustomed to the rhythm of the school week as a full-time teacher on the Tuesday morning when flames erupted across the surface of the East River and the Hudson, and all electrical devices in the city began to malfunction.

The story of Mrs. Miller’s bravery on that day soon appeared in dozens of periodicals, not to mention at least two documentaries and a made-for-TV movie. She has received a presidential commendation, and an America’s Finest award from the city of New York.

In the days after the Fireshield Siege, Mrs. Miller became a household name as newscasters scrambled to find heartwarming and positive news pieces to share alongside the death tolls and catalogues of destruction. She made front pages again three weeks later when hers was one of the first classes to resume instruction, meeting in a student’s family’s penthouse living room and gearing much of their discussions and projects toward ways that they could help with the rebuilding effort.

Despite the bravery, two years later Mrs. Miller was diagnosed with PTSD and left the city with her husband and son, moving to Millburn NJ. For the next few years, Mrs. Miller worked part time as a public school librarian and laid low, barely interacting with anyone outside of her family. She almost never went back to Manhattan.

“It was my hermit time,” Mrs. Miller says of those years. “I had worked so hard after the Fireshield Siege to help others that I didn’t even realize how in need of healing I was. The wounds were buried deep, but sooner or later it was inevitable that the pain would resurface.”

Mrs. Miller credits her husband, her parents and in-laws and her two sons for helping her eventually pass “the dark places” in her life and “step back into the sunlight.” Now a high school English teacher, she has also written an account of her personal struggles called After the Siege.

“I think it tells the story that so many of us experience, after our own traumatic times,” Mrs. Miller said. She was perched on a stool in her yellow-tiled kitchen at the time, drinking tea from an oversized mug. Her brown hair is long, prematurely gray, but she wears the streaks of white like a badge of honor, a testament to all that she has seen and done. “I want my readers to know that there is hope, that there’s a beautiful world for them, just waiting for them to be ready to see it again. I had my boys to do that for me—I hope After the Siege can help to fill that role for others.”

After the Siege will be released on Thanksgiving. We can all look forward to sharing the gratitude that Mrs. Miller feels with the world around her.



(Continue to Brook's revelation.)