Bryan Randolph's volunteer efforts in New York City included assisting emergency response vehicle crews. Photo by Joshua Duplechian

Heeding a call to serve

Bryan Randolph's concerns for victims of the terrorist attacks led him straight to Ground Zero.

The weekend after Sept. 11, Randolph left for the first of his four fall-quarter trips to New York City. Accompanied by a friend, he began lining up places he and other students could volunteer to help on the future trips he already was planning.

Nothing could have prepared him for the devastation wrought upon New York. He had no idea of where to start; he simply began approaching agencies involved in the rescue effort to see if they needed volunteers.

Once back in Athens, Randolph formed Ohio Students United for New York Relief to recruit students interested in volunteering for the positions he found. The response was overwhelming.

Kate Huter, a member of the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity, heard Randolph speak at one of her group's meetings.

"It was one of those things that you just feel inside. I knew I had to go and do what I could," she says. "It was something I knew would change my life forever."

A van sponsored by the University's Center for Community Service took 15 students on a pilgrimage to New York on Sept. 20. Forty-two students from Ohio and Ohio State universities volunteered for a trip two weeks later on a bus sponsored by President Robert Glidden's office.

The students loaded and cleaned the emergency response vehicles that delivered food and water to rescue teams, took inventory and went on food runs that made stops within a block of Ground Zero. They also worked at a center assisting families of victims, volunteered at a Red Cross kitchen and helped at a respite center that provided food and beds for rescue workers.

The people Huter met amazed her.

"I've always heard bad stories about New York and its people, but I have a completely different view now," she says. "The people of New York blew me away with the love they were able to show in the wake of what happened."

Randolph was similarly moved. After three trips to New York, he found it difficult to concentrate in class. He took the Red Cross classes he needed to secure a regular eight-hour shift and made the difficult decision to withdraw from classes for fall quarter.

"I tried to avoid it," he says, "but when I got back from my third trip I slept for about a week and just thought, 'I can't do this.'"

What he could do, in addition to returning to New York a fourth time, was pursue efforts to establish a class at the University focusing on disaster relief. The students could assist in the event of a campus emergency and also would be qualified to respond to national disasters.

"Seeing the firefighters and police officers every day and knowing the kinds of things they had to deal with was difficult," he says. Like Randolph, Huter had trouble focusing on the routine of classes and her job at Baker University Center.

"The only time my life really seems to make sense to me is when I am doing some sort of service," she says. "I feel like I am doing something that matters to the world, which is so much more important to me right now than anything else."

Sarah Welch