Madison Red Cross volunteer reflects on her time helping in New York post Sept. 11

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - Sheila Sims began volunteering with the American Red Cross in Madison about 35 years ago, starting out as a car seat instructor for babies before teaching CPR and first aid classes. About three years in, she began working with the Red Cross’ disaster team.

“It kind of becomes part of you, it gets ingrained, helping people, and it’s just something that you really want to do,” Sims said. “It’s fulfilling, it’s satisfying, you know you’re giving back, you’re helping your neighbors.”

Sims is a regional recovery lead, and has responded to disaster events like fires, floods, and tornadoes. But in 2001, Sims responded to a disaster unlike anything she had ever seen before.

On September 11, 2001, four planes were hijacked and used in terrorist attacks, hitting the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and crashing in Pennsylvania. Sims saw the attacks unfold on TV at work.

“I think I felt like everybody else, just overwhelmed like ‘wow, I can’t believe that happened,’” she said. “You just want to sit there and absorb it and try to have your mind understand what was going on.”

“Sometimes you go and look through the book and you’re reading these, and it just really hits you this was a person, they enjoyed all of these different things, they had the family members,” she said. “It was very emotional sometimes. You just sit there and you would cry a little bit.”

“We were specifically working with the families who had lost their loved ones in this particular event,” she said. “We were working with them, trying to get them any resources they need, working with them on helping with funeral expenses, or they were having a memorial service, working with them on that.”

When Sims reflects back on the difficult, emotional work, she remembers something they called “the book,” a binder of obituaries of those who had passed. Sims said there were multiple books.

“Sometimes you go and look through the book and you’re reading these, and it just really hits you this was a person, they enjoyed all of these different things, they had the family members,” she said. “It was very emotional sometimes. You just sit there and you would cry a little bit.”

Sims witnessed families coping with their loss, sometimes, having to relive it over and over again.

“There were some families that had multiple funerals and memorial services because they might have gotten a piece of bone back that was found in all the wreckage, so they would get a piece of bone and they’d have a service,” she said. “Then they’d get maybe notified again, ‘oh, we found another piece of bone or some other body part.’”

Seeing the devastation firsthand emphasized for Sims the importance of helping others and volunteering.

“It could be you one day that goes through a disaster, and you’d want somebody there to help you if they could,” she said.

She continues to volunteer to this day, with no plans of slowing down. Hoping to be able to help even more people.

“Somebody has to be there to help,” she said. “I think as a human being we all want to help each other, that’s what we’re built for, designed for, to help other people.”

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