When Patti Anewalt first learned about the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, she immediately sensed her phone might ring.

At the time, Patti was an American Red Cross volunteer in Central Pennsylvania and an experienced grief counselor who had expressed interest in disaster mental health work. As coworkers gathered around televisions to watch events unfold, she told her boss she thought she would be called to respond.

She was right.

The next day, Patti was deployed to Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville after passengers fought back against their hijackers. For two weeks, she worked alongside fellow Red Cross volunteers, supporting victims' families, disaster workers and responders as they navigated one of the most tragic moments in American history. Patti arrived with few expectations.

"I really didn't have any expectations because I had no frame of reference to know what this would be like," she said.

What she found was a coordinated response effort unlike anything she had ever seen. The Red Cross and other agencies from across the country rapidly established operations near the crash site. Volunteers, first responders and disaster specialists converged on the rural community, working around the clock.

As family members arrived in Pennsylvania, many visited the crash site for the first time. Some were unsure whether they even wanted to go.

"Several of them I spoke with had mixed feelings about even going to the crash site," Patti said. "People would come with uncertainty approaching the crash site, and once they got to the memorial area, then they really wanted to talk and process what they were going through."

Patti recalled a mother whose son died aboard Flight 93 who felt strongly that she needed to visit the site, while her daughter-in-law chose not to go. After seeing where the plane had gone down, the woman found a sense of peace.

"She said, 'OK, now I'm ready to go forward,'" Patti said.

As a hospice grief counselor, Patti was accustomed to helping people through loss. She brought the same approach to Shanksville.

"Whenever we're teaching in hospice, we say we're a non-anxious presence at a very difficult time in people's lives," she said. "The role I had there was no different than my day role at hospice because it's just being a non-anxious presence to people who are in the worst time in their lives and being present for them."

Her support extended beyond the families. A key part of Red Cross disaster mental health work is caring for the responders themselves. Patti spent time helping the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT), a specialized federal group tasked with victim identification and morgue operations. While this team of experts had experience handling disasters and other mass casualty incidents, Shanksville was different.

"When we were arriving on Sept. 12 and 13 and 14, nobody knew what was going on in the world," Patti said. "A lot of the workers needed to talk about how this was different than the other times they'd been somewhere else. There was a lot that they needed to process."

She also remembers the kindness displayed by the Somerset County community. Local residents lined streets in silence as family members arrived. Restaurants provided meals to responders. Schoolchildren created cards thanking those who had traveled to help.

Yet what she remembers most is not the tragedy itself, but the opportunity to help.

"I just felt it was a privilege to have the opportunity to even be a part of that," Patti said. “With the mental health component, the Red Cross recognizes that piece is important, and I think they’re right.”

The experience would later shape her professional work, informing presentations she gave around the country about grief, crisis response and disaster mental health. It reinforced her belief that while disasters can expose the worst moments in people's lives, they also reveal the best in others.

"It's people helping people," Patti said. "It doesn't matter who you are or where you come from. It's just about being with other people and being a support to them. That's very rewarding."