When the Sept. 11 attack occurred, these Rhode Islanders felt impelled. Some had Red Cross training they'd had little chance to use. Some had never done anything like this before.
But when they saw the planes crash into the towers, when they grasped the enormity, all
had
to go. Two students who couldn't get through on the ever-busy phone lines at the Red Cross just walked there and said, "Here we are."
Last night, on the six-month anniversary of the disaster, about 20 people who had volunteered through the Red Cross to help at the World Trade Center recovery effort gathered at a Providence restaurant. The get-together was conceived and organized by one of the volunteers, Mary Clarke, of Peace Dale, who spent 31/2 months at ground zero.
Some of the volunteers had trained or worked together, but many were strangers -- until they started talking. Their instant rapport ran deeper than their common vocabulary -- "the Pile," "the Red Zone."
Former Bristol resident Albert Ferri drove 31/2 hours from his new home in Canaan, Conn., so he could talk with these people, people who would understand.
"It's puzzling how such a terrible thing can be such an amazing experience," Ferri told the group. "It was an honor to be there and one of the best experiences of my life."
Ferri, a quality engineer, volunteered as a supervisor in one of the "respite areas" that served the rescue workers. "I worked my butt off. I was at the top of my game the whole time," he recalled. When he had his exit interview with mental-health workers, he told them he felt great.
But as soon as he returned home, he spent an entire day crying. "It hit me like a brick in the face."
Ferri found himself avoiding people who he knew would ask "What was it like?"
"I dreaded that question," he said.
"There is no answer to that question," said Mike Sisto, of East Providence, who worked in one of the kitchens.
Many had images they would never forget.
Paula Drzal, a psychiatric nurse, remembers her first glimpse of Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge -- the towers absent, the ground glowing with the lights of rescue workers. "It was so eerie," she said.
Don Silva remembers a fragment of the towers that he passed each day, which he came to regard as a gravestone. And a parking lot full of dusty cars whose owners would never retrieve them.
Drzal went in October as a mental health worker. But last night she talked of pulling boots off firemen's feet and powdering their blisters. "Hopefully we were able to provide some comfort to them," she said.
Silva, a systems analyst from Swansea, handled logistics and ordered supplies for the respite centers. But he talked about the mental health work he ended up doing. "More than anything, you gave your heart," he said. "People would come up and talk to you."
For Silva, being in a disaster area brought back bad memories from his service in Vietnam. But it also offered a healing contrast to Vietnam: "For the first time, people said 'thank you' and 'God bless you' instead of throwing things at you and calling you nasty names."
"I don't think I've ever heard 'God bless you' so many times in my life," Ferri said.
Anait Azarian, of North Providence, a child psychologist, was part of the mental health group. She tried to comfort children who had witnessed people jumping from the towers, children whose parents never came to pick them up at school. She tried to explain why it happened, to the extent that such a thing can be explained. And she told them that grownups would do their best to protect them in the future.
Azarian and her husband, Vitali Skriptchenko, have worked in many disaster areas around the world, including Chernobyl and the Armenian earthquake. They are accustomed to horror. "Even for us," she said, "it was overwhelming." Yesterday was one of the few times she had been able talk about it without crying.
"Such magnitude of human suffering. . . it's too much for people," said Skriptchenko, a professor at Brown University. "I'm grateful to have the opportunity to go there. Somehow it's opened my eyes more."
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