Standing at the foot of the crumbled buildings that once were the World Trade Center towers, Bob and Sylvia Stevens recall the crash of breaking glass falling to their feet.
“I will never forget that sound,” Sylvia said. She felt overwhelmed as she listened to the demolition of the buildings surrounding the twin towers site during her December visit.
With five other volunteers - current and retired MSU employees - the Stevens packed themselves into two cars and drove 12 hours to New York City over the winter holiday.
The couple gave up their usual vacation to walk across the ash-covered territory of the area surrounding the World Trade Center and to give something back to a community that had suffered tremendous loss.
They sorted boxes of clothes, supplies and toiletries. They cooked, served and delivered food to various locations around the city, including Ground Zero.
But the seven individuals also relieved the rescue workers for the ringing in of the New Year. They worked, laughed and cried with the city’s natives. And they brought the support of MSU’s small little section of the world to the center of the destruction.
“It all goes back to that feeling I had sitting at my kitchen table watching everything evolve, and the horror of it all,” said Sylvia Stevens, a retired administrative assistant in the Department of Family and Community Medicine.
“I just needed to be there.”
Sylvia Stevens and her husband decided to join a group of MSU associates and spent a week working in the heart of Manhattan - living in the home of MSU alumni who fed and housed the volunteers.
Meeting the people who survived the attacks and worked in the midst of the catastrophe was the most heart-wrenching of his experiences, Bob Stevens said. On two days, the volunteers served food to the rescue workers at Nino’s Restaurant - an area restaurant that was revamped to serve Ground Zero workers.
“We met, talked with and observed the people of New York,” he said.
“Some of them were cheerful. Others would just go in a corner by themselves and stare at the floor. Others yet would go out weeping to have their meal.
“These were real, live people. They weren’t just someone on TV.”
But meeting a New York police officer was an experience Bob Stevens said rendered him speechless.
“He was such a nice, handsome young man,” Bob said. “But we knew there was 300 plus people, just like that fella, who had been crushed.
“That’s what really brought it home.”
Experiencing hope in a place that had survived the terrorist attacks, Bob and Sylvia Stevens said they brought a sense of gratitude back to Michigan with them.
“We’re old enough to have experienced loss of family members, of relatives and friends, and have come to appreciate what I think a lot of people have learned from this - the gift of being alive,” he said.
Besides learning their own life lessons from being in New York, the retired couple also acted as mentors to the rest of the volunteers, said Kris Tetens, who organized the MSU volunteers.
“They were like grandparents to us,” she said.
At the week’s completion, each of the volunteers came home with their own lessons, including Tetens, who is MSU’s media relations project manager.
“It could have been any one of us going to work one day and not coming home,” she said. “There’s nothing quite like a national tragedy to make Americans realize they have more in common than they have differences.
“I’m heartened by what I see on the news of New York’s recovery. I still get emotional when I think about it.”
Memories of New York still resurface a current of emotion for volunteer Julia Lenardon, assistant professor at the Department of Theatre, who described her first task in the city.
While organizing boxes of work boots, Lenardon discovered each box contained not only a pair of boots and woolen socks, but a handmade card from a child.
“It was pretty hard to handle, but joyful at the same time,” she said. “I knew for sure whoever wore those boots would see that card.”
And the professor was able to see the workers up close while delivering food inside the construction site at Ground Zero. Walking to the site, she passed a 200-year-old church and cemetery where workers stopped to rest.
“All the chaos and noise of New York just seemed to disappear,” she said. “You’re walking past the graveyard to another mass grave.”
MSU police Lt. Sue Busnardo said she approached the solemn scene at Ground Zero with a profound sense of pride in sharing a career with the city’s officers.
“It’s hard to separate your personal life from your work,” Busnardo said. “I felt proud to be there.
“I felt like I was representing not only myself, but police from all over Michigan.”
After five days of physical and emotional exhaustion, each of the seven volunteers returned home to recooperate.
While some volunteers released their emotion through tears, Busnardo gathered more supplies to send to a city she didn’t want to leave behind.
“It was hard to disengage myself,” Busnardo said.
Returning on a Saturday night, the Stevens were too exhausted to react until they attended a church service the following morning. Sylvia Stevens recalled silently weeping.
“We lost it in the quiet of the sanctuary,” she said.
Tara May can be reached at maytara@msu.edu.
