Day at the museum tragically memorable

The what-ifs poured through Stephanie Geraghty's mind once she finally made it home from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where she had been standing — then hiding — as soon as the gunshots rang out Wednesday.

What if she had left the museum a few minutes later to plug her parking meter? What if she had lingered at a traffic light? Or made small talk with the guard as he swabbed her purse for explosives during a random check?

Seven months' pregnant, the 28-year-old Avoca, Iowa, native had been standing just 20 feet from the museum's entrance when the gunman's first shot cracked through the air Wednesday afternoon.

Then came more shots. Then screams. People dropping to the floor, hands over their heads. People running.

Geraghty followed the runners into an exhibit called "Remember the Children: Daniel's Story." The fully-enclosed exhibit takes visitors through a Jewish ghetto, through a house where a boy named Daniel lived and to a concentration camp. The exhibit has some narrow passageways and just one exit.

Standing at the rear, Geraghty wondered if she'd chosen a good enough hiding place. She felt trapped.

She thought of her sister-in-law Shannon Clark, visiting from Anamosa, Iowa, on the second floor somewhere.

It was 26-year-old Clark's third trip to Washington, D.C., and the No. 1 place she wanted to visit was the Holocaust Museum. Geraghty, who lives in Quantico, Va., had been to the museum twice before and had, therefore, volunteered to be the one to go outside each hour to plug a one-hour meter they had parked at a block and a half away.

The museum recommends that visitors spend three hours, beginning their tour at the top floor.

The pair of Iowa natives had arrived at 10:30 a.m. EST and already had put in two hours. They had just descended to the second floor when Geraghty looked at her watch.

Half-past twelve. Time to pump more change into the meter.

"You'll still be here when I get back, right?" asked Geraghty, a University of Kansas graduate who works part-time, long-distance, as a database administrator for Lockheed Martin.

"Yep," replied Clark, a dental hygienist who had gotten married last fall.

Geraghty left the museum and hurried to her car, a Honda Accord. She pumped an hour's worth of change into the meter, hurried back and smiled at the guard who opened the front door for her.

She put her purse on the conveyor belt and walked through a metal detector. She was pulled aside for a random check of her purse and wondered whether guards ever find anything.

She thought of asking that question but kept it to herself and, once she had her purse back, kept walking.

That's when she heard the first loud crack.

She whirled around. Had a concrete block just fallen to the floor?

Crack! Crack!

"Three shots for sure," she said in a phone interview Wednesday. "That's when everyone started panicking and running. . . . People were screaming, there was a lot of screaming. I saw people drop to the floor."

She bolted for the exhibit where people were shoving each other in a scramble to get as far away from the entrance as they could.

That's when Geraghty started to panic. They were trapped inside. There was nowhere to go if the gunman followed them. And what about her sister-in-law?

She reached for her cell phone and called her Marine husband.

When she heard his voice, she started to cry.

Staff Sgt. Brian Geraghty, who has served in Afghanistan and Iraq, calmly asked what happened, where she was and whether his sister was OK. He told his wife to wait until security came to escort them out.

"Everything will be OK," he said.

Ten long minutes later, a security guard came and ushered the group out a back door. Geraghty rushed to her Honda, figuring it would be where her sister-in-law would go, too.

It had taken longer for Shannon Clark and others on upper floors to leave the museum, and they were led to the end of the National Mall near the Washington Monument.

Clark borrowed a construction worker's cell phone and called Geraghty.

They saw each other and started running.

They hugged.

Once safely home to her husband and 2-year-old son, Geraghty said the reality still hadn't set in. She wonders which of the five or six security guards she saw at the entrance was killed by the gunman.

But the irony of it all had not escaped Geraghty. She said the shooting underscores the importance of learning about the Holocaust and preventing it from occurring again.

"I'm just relieved it wasn't my time today," she said. "Maybe I'll be a little bit more on spot with my priorities and not let the little things get to me as much."

World-Herald staff writer Pete Soby contributed to this report.

• Contact the writer: 444-1136, erin.grace@owh.com