butrflilover

After 911 and the first plane hit i was watching it on the news as I got ready for work. On the way into work i was listening to the radio "Howard Stern" was on reading all of the items needed donated to help rescue all of the people in this tragedy.

I was hearing things like Ace Bandages, bottled H20, power bars, Gatorade, Saline solution, dog food etc. So i was having these thoughts in my head that i was going to go door to door and start asking for donations and deliver them to NYC myself. I started to chuckle out loud and was like "Yea right I am not going to NYC, I have never been there, I have no $, I don't even have a truck to fit anything in"....excuses really.

All of a sudden in my car i was hearing "You will be going", me replying with "No I am not" again "Yes you will" and I'll be damned if I did not walk into my job (Ruby Tuesday's which i was a hostess at and had only worked there 2 weeks) went up to my manager and explained what had happened on my journey to work that morning. I even got a free tattoo just because of what I did.

My manager had totally surprised me and said "Go for it!" If you need to leave now go ahead so I typed up a list of items that were needed for people to donate, took that as a start and walked right over to Wal-Mart across the street and talked to their manager who ended up giving me two $100 gift cards. I kept going and I had people handing me $$ for gas, I went to a local Automobile dealership and he donated $2000 to American Red Cross.

It just kept blossoming from there, I was on the radio, TV stations were talking about it, I had contact U-Haul in Streetsboro, Ohio and spoke to the manager there and told him what i was doing. In our conversation he asked me if i knew someone, I mentioned his wife was my manager. This manager says well her husband is the General Manager of this U-Haul and offered me a truck for free. When I told him I didn't have a clue how i was going to do this because I had never been to NYC he said his Dad worked not too far from NYC and would gladly help me drive there and also brought 2 of his employees. I had went back to work and by then 2 girls I was working with offered to come along too so all 6 of us made the trip 5 days later we left at midnight and arrived at 9am. Now my name is Kelly, the names of the 2 girls offering to join me were Charity and Kelly. Ok maybe a coincidence but wow.

So when we finally arrived to New York as we were driving across the GW Bridge you could still see the smoke rising from the Twin Towers. It was a very Surreal and Somber visit. The whole city was completely QUIET, not at all like the movies or TV. It had hit everyone so hard that even 5 days later everyone was still in shock.

By this time so many people had donated supplies that the whole baseball stadium was full and i kept getting turned away at all of the drop off locations for 3 hours i searched and no luck. I was not going to give up though so i pulled over got out of the vehicle and walked up to a police officer, explained i drove from Ohio and was not going to return with these donations. He then spoke to his Sergeant and immediately removed all of the barricades from blocking a road. He escorted us to the NYPD Police Academy and had all of the cadets search our truck and unload all of our donations. It was the most coolest moment of my life.

They offered all 6 of us cots to rest on, (the same cots all of the fireman, policemen, rescuers etc. rested on) offered us a shower, tooth brush , lunch, even the snipers on top of the roof gave us all a NYPD hat and T-Shirt and thanked us for delivering these donations. I was just taken back by this whole life changing experience that I never would have witnessed if I hadn't listened.

We drove around and toured the area a bit before heading back home By this time the U-haul guys already left and went home but I just couldn't leave I needed to get a feel of this place for a little bit so we stayed. Unfortunately we even could smell the death in the air but I got to meet some wonderful people, people I will never ever forget.

But there is even more wonderful things to say about this whole thing.

3 years later a relative of mine met someone online in NJ, asked me if i would take them there and I did. This was in 2003. When we got there we were so close to NYC that i decided to go back, drive around the area I had gotten to know back then even went back to that NYPD academy. I walked into the doors of the Police department and sitting at the main desk was one of those people I said I wouldn't forget. That same Sergeant was there, He looked up at me and said "Aren't you that girl from Ohio who brought us donations?" I just stood there and cried, he walked over to me and gave me a hug. I even got signatures from the pics i took in 2001 because I brought that album with me.