When the American Red Cross called for volunteers to deploy after the Sept. 11 attacks, Gerry Shields-Travis raised her hand. She had never been on an airplane. She had never seen New York City. She went to help in any way she could.

None of it was part of her job. To this day, Gerry works at the Southwestern Pennsylvania Chapter office in Pittsburgh as a business operations specialist. She had been employed with the Red Cross for about eight years when the attacks happened.

Gerry volunteered to deploy to New York and in November 2001, she spent two and a half weeks bringing meals to the firefighters, police officers and recovery workers at Ground Zero, where the site was still burning two months after the towers fell.

“It took my breath away,” Gerry said. “The reality hit that this is real. This is not something on television. People lost their lives here. And there were still thousands of people missing.”

Answering the Call

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Gerry was working at the front desk of the Red Cross chapter office in Pittsburgh. Her husband called to tell her about the first plane that hit the Twin Towers, then called back about the second. The phones at the Red Cross office started ringing “off the hook,” Gerry said. Callers wanted news about people they loved in New York.

“I pride myself on having answers and being able to help,” she said. “And I didn’t have any words for anyone. I constantly found myself fighting back tears.”

Answering the phones was her job, but getting on a plane to volunteer was not. Gerry raised her hand to deploy and got the approval. Her sons were young, and her family was frightened for her.

“I told them, I work for the Red Cross,” she said. “We go to disasters. That is what we do. We don’t run away from them. We run to them.”

Gerry was one of more than 57,000 Red Cross workers who responded to the attacks. Together they served more than 14 million meals and snacks, opened dozens of shelters and made some 374,000 connections offering emotional support and health services.

She flew alone, and she arrived with one instruction for herself.

“My mindset was, I am going to be where you need me,” said Gerry. “If that is where the need is, that is where I want to be.”

In New York, Gerry’s team collected meals from restaurants across the city and delivered them to the crews working at Ground Zero. She remembers the looks on the faces of the emergency responders who were working through the rubble.“

You could see their tear marks through the soot,” she said. “They were on a mission, and you saw that in their movement, in their words. If there is a blessing in it, it was being able to give something to eat to people who were giving their all.”

Twenty-five years later, the memories still arrive on schedule.

“Especially when it gets close to Sept. 11, that is when it all comes back,” said Gerry.

She has been back to New York several times but has never returned to the site of the attacks.

Adapting to the Need

Gerry took whatever assignment came, and it is what she tells anyone heading out on a Red Cross disaster deployment now.

“Go with an open mind and be willing to help in any area you can,” said Gerry. “It might not be your norm. Be willing to adapt to whatever the need is.”

Learn more about becoming a Red Cross volunteer at redcross.org/volunteer.