Community Currency - 09/15/11

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9/11: A Journey

Kathryn Bedard is a first responder. With a background, experience and training in mental health and disaster relief, she was reassigned  following 9/11 by the state to serve as a key member of a team, set up by New Jersey to offer services to survivors and victims' families. The team officially was known as the Family Assistance Center or FAC. Their job was to take victims families to Ground Zero. That experience, witnessing the emotions, stages of grief that people went through was profoundly moving and prompted her to write a book Stones In My Heart Forever: 9-11: A Journey Through Courage, Strength and Hope. She learned about "healing" and "what it means to work in a disaster of that magnitude, where "normal" and healing in the aftermath takes on a whole different meaning.

Part of her "healing" experience has been to take part in a motorcycle ride fundraising effort to assist responders for things such as upgraded equipment, and families in the form of scholarships.

The huge motorcycle runs also help responders replace the intensity of what is encountered in disasters as one tries to go back to a "normal" life. In the most recent run British firefighters came from the UK, and from as far away as New Zealand, and about 900 others came, as well from across the country: north, south, west...TN, FL, CA, GA...

Kathy worked at the WTC site with an amazing group of angels who worked from September through December taking family members and survivors from the towers into Ground Zero to mourn. Every day, including holidays and weekends they took between 80 - 250 individuals into the damage zone. She would gather occasionally with her colleagues as they tried to adjust to life after their time at Ground Zero. She still is part of the Mt Sinai monitoring program. When responders gather together, they focus on celebrating life and each other. None of them knew each other before 9/11, but they all had the sense that they knew each other, they communicated (still) non-verbally, and have ties to each other that are strong as family. Their work was also chronicled in Gail Sheeheys book Middletown America.