The small, two-person recreational plane shook roughly, then dove straight down on a crash course, the back propellor accelerating the plane to the ground.

Kristin Meyer, orchestra director at Glenbrook North and Glenbrook South, was the only passenger on board with the pilot.

“I distinctly remember [thinking on the way down], this is going to be pass or fail,” said Kristin Meyer. “If I’m alive…then I’m going to get out of this.”

The plane crashed upside down in a remote field, about five miles away from its destination. Kristin Meyer had been attending a family reunion at an airfield in Monee, Ill., and decided to go on a tour of the area on Sept. 7 via the plane.

Kristin Meyer said she does not remember the impact, but when she finally regained consciousness, she used the emergency release on her seat belt in order to get down since the plane was upside down. The pilot, though, was not moving.

“[The pilot] was bleeding so much that I knew if I didn’t get him down, he would not make it,” said Kristin Meyer. “I got his helmet off and tried to figure out where the bleeding was coming from.”

Knowing that time was of the essence and that small planes typically do not have radar or air traffic control, Kristin Meyer said she tried to use the plane’s radio to contact somebody. However, the radio was not working, so she resorted to yelling, ‘Help.’

According to Kristin Meyer, nobody was near the crash scene.

When the pilot regained consciousness, Kristin Meyer said he seemed confused and she tried to get him to understand that he needed to keep pressure on his neck because he was bleeding. Eventually, they determined that the plane had flown into power lines, which caused the crash.

The power lines laid on the ground, surging with electricity beside the plane which was leaking gasoline. Both Kristin Meyer and the pilot had to turn the plane over on its side to stop the leakage to make sure the plane did not catch fire. Kristin Meyer said she is in awe of the adrenaline that abled her to “turn the plane on its side” despite her injuries.

“People keep asking me, ‘How were you able to do that?’” said Kristin Meyer. “The only thing I can say is that I knew…if anyone was going to get us out of there, it had to be me and we had to get out so…we could survive — so we could live.”

According to Kristin Meyer, the pilot had a cell phone and Kristin Meyer called her husband, Carl Meyer, who was back at the airfield.

When he answered his phone, Carl Meyer said his wife sounded very calm, saying she had been in an accident, but was alright.

“She was carrying on a conversation as though it wasn’t as bad as it was,” said Carl Meyer. “I finally said, ‘Well at least you’re doing okay,’ and she said, ‘No, I’m really not.’ And her voice kind of broke a little bit when she said that and…I realized that it was probably a lot worse than she was letting on.”

Kristin Meyer said she kept her voice calm on purpose because she could not imagine being on the receiving end of the phone call.

According to Carl Meyer, he and the people at the airfield were able to use his wife’s description of where the plane crashed in order to find his wife and the pilot, and they  arrived with an ambulance.

“He’s Superman,” said Kristin Meyer. “He saved my life.”

At the hospital, the doctors discovered Kristin Meyer had life-threatening internal bleeding in her lungs, in addition to three broken ribs and a torn rotator cuff in her left shoulder.

“With every doctor, I was asking, ‘Is she going to be okay?’,” said Carl Meyer. “Probably the scariest thing was hearing the answer, ‘We hope so.’ You want to hear, ‘Yes, it’ll be okay,’ and nobody was willing to say that.”

According to Kristin Meyer, the first thing she wanted to know at the hospital was the pilot’s condition. When a doctor told her the pilot had gotten to the hospital in time, she said she was relieved.

“I’m a music teacher,” said Kristin Meyer. “You don’t think that [saving somebody’s life] is going to be a part of your story.”

Aaron Kaplan, orchestra director at GBN and GBS, said working without Kristin Meyer is a challenge because they “co-teach in every sense of the term.”

The accident happened a few days before the first Glenbrook Symphony Orchestra rehearsal.

Even though it is only his second year of teaching, Kaplan said he was very lucky to be familiar with the orchestra program since he went to GBN, and even had Kristin Meyer as his teacher.

“I said to the orchestra, ‘We have to make sure that even though this horrific event happened, we need to work even harder and make sure that when Mrs. Meyer comes back, everything is at a level that she is proud of,’” Kaplan said.

According to Carl Meyer, the hardest part of the recovery for both of them is understanding that the body needs time to heal.

“I think my spirit and my heart is ready to be recovered and ready to be back doing what I love with the kids I love, [but] my body is saying it needs time…to do its job to heal,” Kristin Meyer said.

Her major goal right now is to be at the March concert, whether she would be conducting a piece or being there to support the orchestra.

Whenever Kristin Meyer does come back, though, she said she knows what she will wear. The day of the accident, she was wearing a GBN quarter-zip sweatshirt that she refused to let the doctors throw out, even though gasoline had leaked onto it from the plane.

“I haven’t put [the sweater] on since [the crash] because when I put it on, I’m going back [to teaching],” Kristin Meyer said.