The city of Brooklyn and the music world can collectively exhale, as 80-year-old Sandra Hall, the legendary singer from The Platters, has been confirmed safe after an excruciating four-day disappearance. According to ABC7NY, the famed vocalist was found at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital on Wednesday; she suffers from dementia and had been without identification when she went missing last Friday.
Hall, known in her heyday as Sandra Dawn, was last seen boarding a No. 2 subway train in Brooklyn, and NYPD officers, alongside her distressed family, initiated searches for her. "I can't tell you how much angst, how worried, I would sit out here and look up and down the street and wait for her to come back," her daughter Natasha Barrett conveyed her turmoil in a statement obtained by ABC7NY. The singer's granddaughter, Tairese Barrett, expressed her past fears of pursuit due to concerns about safety around train tracks, noting that despite prior similar incidents, Hall had never been gone this long.
Although originally not a founding member of The Platters, Hall's tenure with the group brought them sustained success, with a number of their tracks topping the Billboard charts. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, The Platters' legacy endorses hit tunes like "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" and "The Great Pretender," as detailed by the New York Post.
Upon hearing the welcome news of Hall's safety, Tairese Barrett humorously remarked, "She’s gonna be jailed in the house, I can’t do this again, No way, This was too much," an emotional response to the ordeal, as reported by the New York Post. The family had also pursued a tip suggesting Hall might have been in the Bronx, which was supported by her northbound subway trajectory; the tip offered a glimmer of hope with "an accurate description so I'm feeling confident about it," Hall's daughter shared on Facebook.
