Woman Stuck in Elevator Says Prayer Helped
BEAVER DAM, Wis. — A woman says she read a prayer book and somehow managed to stay calm while trapped nearly 18 hours in a cold elevator at the high school where she works as an accountant.
“I thought it would be nice at one point to scream, rant and rave, but that would not get me anywhere,” Gretchen Forrester, 58, said last week.
“So I took out my rosary and started praying. I had a beautiful prayer book with me that I read most of the night. I didn’t sleep.”
Finally, at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, Charlie Mann, interim superintendent of buildings and grounds at Wayland Academy in this southeast Wisconsin city, asked Forrester if she was in the elevator.
“And I said, ‘Yes, Charlie, get me out of here,” she recalled. He did.
Forrester was going to her office in a new building at the private school when she stepped into the elevator around 1 p.m. Tuesday.
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