Jessica Wilson

Jessica Wilson, a 20-year-old college student from Springfield serving as a summer intern for a member of the British Parliament, took a taxi instead of the London subway to work Thursday for the first time.

She didn't know until later that morning how close she had come to being caught up in the terrorist bombings that hobbled London's transit systems, especially the "tube," as the subway there is known, and killed dozens that day.

"It's very eerie to be in London and be part of something like this," Wilson said by telephone Friday from Plymouth, where she traveled later Thursday with Linda Gilroy, the member of the Labour Party with whom she is working.

A car trip to Gilroy's district, including part of Plymouth, had been planned for Thursday.Because of that trip, Wilson said, "I had packed a suitcase, so I took a cab to work, instead of the tube like I normally would have" on the way to Gilroy's London office.

"One of the women who works in the Plymouth office here, I was telling her about it, and she said that it was fate," Wilson said.

Had she taken the subway, "I probably wouldn't have been anywhere near the bombs" because she ordinarily doesn't travel through the three stations affected, Wilson said.But, she added, "Certainly, when they went off, I would have been somewhere on the tube."

Wilson, a 2003 graduate of Glenwood High School in Chatham, who is on track to graduate in May from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in political science and psychology, is in a summer work program with approximately 30 American students.About a dozen work with Parliament.

After she arrived at work, one student called in to say there had been some sort of a power surge at a tube station.

"I said, 'Fine, I'll let them know you're going to be late,'" she said.

But he called back again, about 9:30 a.m., and said, "There's absolutely no way to get into town.The entire underground system is closed.They're not letting any buses into Zone 1," which is central London.

"At that point, I was starting to get a little bit worried," Wilson said.

She got on the BBC Web site, which was then reporting three apparent power surges at different places on the tube.
...
"All I could think is every person I know in London is somewhere on the transport system right now," Wilson said."It was really scary."

She quickly called her family in Springfield and talked to her mother, Lynn Cooper.

"I knew the first thing she would do when she got up was turn on the news," Wilson said."I wanted her to hear from me before she knew what was going on, because I knew she would absolutely freak out."

"I kind of woke her up," Wilson added, because it was about 4:30 a.m. Springfield time.
...
As it turned out, all students in the program were OK, said Wilson, who sent an e-mail to each of them shortly after news of the attacks broke.

"By midday . . . things had really kind of calmed down," she said, describing London that afternoon as "eerily back to normal."

But there were differences.

"Nobody was driving," she said."We heard sirens all day, because Parliament is close to one of the hospitals."

Parliament did conduct business the day of the attacks, starting on time about 10:30, she said.And she also said that despite the loss of life, television scenes make London look worse than it was.

She said the attacks were not unexpected by residents of London, who had thought they might coincide with elections last spring.But when attacks didn't come at that time, she said, "I don't think anyone was relieved.