On September 15th, Jodie Welkes (STERN ’94, ’99) was admitted downtown as a crisis counselor, based on her training and her years of volunteer service on a suicide/crisis intervention hotline. With her friend Leon Feingold, a triage center volunteer, Welkes arrived at Pace University, where she thought she would help people who simply needed to talk.
That is not what happened. Welkes and Feingold began carrying and distributing water to National Guard volunteers and other rescue workers downtown. Gradually, they found themselves in “the pit,” Ground Zero. “For a moment, I just wanted to run away,” she said. “What you might have seen on TV only shows part of the devastation.”
Welkes did not run away. Instead, she spent hours bringing cold drinks and food to rescue workers. She helped to set up more triage areas. She took her place on the “bucket brigade,” the lines of workers surrounding the pit and filling up buckets with whatever they could find to be sorted through later.
Two days before the attack, Welkes had gone to the top of the World Trade Center for the first time with friends visiting from London. Now she was standing at Ground Zero, sorting out what was left of the towers. She is still struggling to make sense of it all. “I don’t know if I ever will,” she says. “The images of what I saw there and what I see on television haunt me. But I have seen people from all different religions and ethnic backgrounds coming together as Americans. These are the images that keep me going. They convince me that despite the evil actions of a few cowardly creatures, human beings are inherently good. And we will endure.”
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