Sometimes Gloria’s life veered into true adventure. In the summer of 1945, she was working at the USO headquarters on the 56th floor of New York City’s Empire State Building — when suddenly, a U.S. Army B-25 Mitchell bomber crashed into the 79th floor. Fourteen people were killed, but Gloria narrowly escaped with her life.

”It threw me across the room, and I landed against the wall. We didn’t know if it was a bomb or what happened. It was terrifying,” Pall told NPR in 2008.