UI staff members volunteer at 'Ground Zero' By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor (217) 244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu
Buglers and bagpipers played "Taps" and "America the Beautiful." A riderless horse and an empty stretcher, symbolizing the thousands of victims whose bodies were never recovered from the rubble of the World Trade Center, were solemnly escorted from the site by honor guards of police and firefighters during a ceremony May 30 that officially marked the end of the 261-day recovery phase at the site known as Ground Zero. Twelve people from the University of Illinois Urbana campus played a small part in the recovery efforts at the site by working as Salvation Army volunteers. The group coalesced through Susan Warsaw, a systems analyst in the University Office of Business and Financial Services. A native New Yorker, Warsaw felt compelled to assist and traveled four times to New York City to work as a volunteer with the United Way and the Salvation Army. Immediately after Sept. 11, Warsaw began contacting relief agencies volunteering to help. In October, the United Way beckoned, and Warsaw traveled to New York City to assist the agency with processing the deluge of monetary donations. During her second trip in January, Warsaw interviewed Ground Zero recovery workers and volunteers on "The Stevie Jay Show," broadcast on WDWS-AM. Within a week of her return, 24 people, many of them UI employees, had volunteered to accompany Warsaw on a trip in April to work at the site.
"It was the fact that we could finally do something for the people of New York," said volunteer Kathy McKenzie, director of Purchasing. "It was hard to sit here and know what those people were going through and not do anything to help." UI police Capt. Kris Fitzpatrick said she wanted to demonstrate her support for New Yorks police officers, some of whom she had met while attending a training program in the city during the 1980s. Jeanne Flessner, a clerk in purchasing, said she had reluctantly agreed to the trip at Warsaws and McKenzies gentle insistence. Calling her motives "purely selfish," Flessner said she had hoped the experience would help her transcend her own grief over her 26-year-old son Bradleys death in a November 2001 car accident. While in New York City, the volunteers helped staff the Salvation Army tents at the World Trade Center site and at nearby Belleview Hospital, the makeshift morgue where technicians and medical examiners continue trying to match remains with the identities of the missing. Staffed mostly by volunteers, the Salvation Army relief tents operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, supporting the recovery workers by providing hot meals, personal supplies, beds and counseling services.
Alongside volunteers from other states and other countries, the Illinoisans dished up meals, brewed coffee, cleared tables, washed dishes and swept floors. They sorted through thousands of cards, letters, pictures and gifts sent by children and adults from around the world to the police, firefighters and even the rescue dogs working at the site. Weeks after their trip, some of the volunteers dabbed tears from their eyes and struggled to contain quavering voices as they recalled the recovery work
ers ardent expressions of gratitude for the volunteers work. Some of the firefighters and rescue workers bestowed tokens of appreciation on some of the volunteers, such as hats and T-shirts emblazoned with the Fire Department of New York logo and a shard of broken glass from one of the World Trade Centers windows. Yet, none of the volunteers felt they had helped enough. They said they wished they could have gone back again, stayed longer, done more.
The volunteers, who had put their own lives on hold for a few
| 'Ground Zero' Volunteers from the University of Illinois |
| Kris Fitzpatrick, Public Safety |
| Jeannie Flessner, Purchasing |
| June Holmes, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts |
| Janeane Keller, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts |
| Kathy McKenzie, Purchasing |
| Mary Scott (Scottie) Miller, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences |
| Sandy Pjanowski, department of chemistry |
| Jamee Potts, UI Foundation |
| Barb Roemer, UI Integrate |
| Connie Shaw, department of business administration |
| Ron Warsaw, U.S. Department of Agriculture |
| Susan Warsaw, University office of Business and Financial Services |
days while they traveled to New York City at their own expense, said they felt humbled by the gritty determination and s
elflessness of the rescue workers, the volunteers and the victims family members they had met. The volunteers also found the outpouring of sympathy from people around the world very moving. The walls of the Salvation Army tent and of nearby St. Pauls Chapel, which miraculously had survived the tumult intact, were covered with well-wishers letters, pictures and quilts. A reverent silence also enveloped the Salvation Army tents and the chapel despite the hundreds of workers congregating for meals round the clock, the volunteers said. Warsaw praised all the Illinois volunteers, noting that with their help the Salvation Army had hastened the recovery process, enabling recovery workers to finish the cleanup from the disaster on schedule. Warsaw also lauded Steve Leonard, the manager of the Pennsylvania Hotel, for giving the volunteers a sizable discount on their room rates at the hotel. During a chance encounter while volunteering at the Belleview Hospital site, Flessner and the mother of a missing firefighter found solace in a shared embrace and their promises to pray for one another. "We are all in this together, whether it was my son in a car accident here or those people killed by terrorists," Flessner said. "Grief and sorrow is the same everywhere, and people need help. By us being there, we were showing them that we felt for them, we knew they were going through a lot and that we cared." Their anguish over sons wrenched away in disparate tragedies forged an instantaneous kinship between Flessner and the firefighters mother. Flessner said she found a measure of comfort in that she had at least had her loved ones remains to lay to rest and grieve over, unlike thousands of families who lost members in the World Trade Center catastrophe. For the volunteers, the tragedies devastating toll on individuals lives became soberingly real through the makeshift memorials mounds of flowers, notes, photographs and mementos left throughout the city by grief-stricken relatives and visitors in honor of the dead and the missing. "They had all these letters from kids to their parents," McKenzie said, recalling the memorials that had been left on the family viewing platform at Ground Zero. "There was a dollar bill next to [a photo] and a note a child had left saying they were leaving a dollar bill in case Daddy wanted to call them from Heaven. It became personal: There was a face, there was a name, there was their family." The volunteers also said their experience engendered a greater respect for the Salvation Armys disaster relief mission as well as an awareness that seemingly minor altruistic acts can be vitally important to people in need. Scottie Miller, associate director of development in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, said her experience volunteering in New York City has inspired her to seek other opportunities to serve others since she returned. Several of the volunteers wrote about their experiences, and Warsaw compiled their words into a volume titled "Book of Memories From Ground Zero," and gave copies to all the volunteers and to the Salvation Army of Greater New York. The Smithsonian Institute may include a copy of the book in a traveling memorial exhibit about the Sept. 11 tragedy, Warsaw said.