Cortland couple returns from helping at NYC crash site with renewed spirits

A young Red Cross volunteer wore a T-shirt reading: 'Need a hug, just ask.'
By TIM YOVICH
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- A Trumbull County couple has returned from New York City with indelible impressions of the World Trade Center relief effort.
"It just put a lump in your throat you couldn't believe," John Scott said of what he saw.
"All you could do was rub their arm as they talked. They just wanted to vent," Scott's wife, Marian, recalled of the rescue workers and victims of the Sept. 11 attack.
The Scotts, of Cortland, spent 21 days near ground zero as mass-care technicians from the Trumbull County Chapter of the American Red Cross.
They remember a young Red Cross worker in her early 20s wearing a T-shirt.
"Need a hug, just ask," it read. Rescuers took her up on her offer.
"We cheered and clapped. Anything to lighten their day," Marian Scott said.
She told of a woman in her 60s who dipped bath towels in ice water and wiped the workers' faces as they walked away from the wreckage for some rest.
When one firefighter resisted the cold towel, the woman strapped it around his neck and pulled his head down to hers.
"If I had a son, I'd want somebody to wipe his face," Marian Scott said the volunteer firmly told him.
For the Scotts, both 56, it was their first venture into a national disaster.
They arrived in New York with their Red Cross vehicle two days after the attack.
They became Red Cross volunteers in 1997. The agency had helped them after fire struck their home. Scott is a retired autoworker.
Provided meals: During their relief work, the couple got up at 3:30 a.m. to catch a shuttle bus from their hotel room to a United Parcel Service parking lot where a kitchen was set up a mile from the crash scene.
They delivered about 300 breakfasts daily, dropping off snacks along the way to those who manned the barricades.
They'd return to the kitchen, do the same for lunch, then help load the trucks for those who would deliver dinners.
They were usually back to their room by 7 p.m., to get showers and go to sleep, only to get up and do it all again.
Courage, pain: There are so many stories to tell, the Scotts say.
They told of rescue workers who brought back body parts from the twisted wreckage so families of the victims could have something to bury.
They told of a Texan who, after hearing of the attack, got into his Jeep and drove to New York to help.
"Strangers walked up and gave you a hug," Scott said.
One policeman who was on duty in Manhattan on Sept. 11 told Marian Scott he watched both planes crash into the twin towers and people jumping with their faces ablaze.
He had difficulty sleeping and couldn't find the time to get counseling, he told her.
Scott was in Battery Park and had been talking to a woman for about 10 minutes when tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Thirty of her co-workers had died, she said.
Before leaving, however, the Scotts could see a brightening difference in people's attitudes.
They were beginning to walk with their heads up, smiling.
And that, they said, let them leave with a better feeling.