Locals Return From Recovery Efforts

CINCINNATI -- When the effort at the World Trade Center in New York shifted from a rescue to a recovery mission, items previously looked over in the rubble took on new significance.

Video

Dentist Closed Practice To Volunteer

WLWT Eyewitness News 5's Anne Marie Tiernon reported that a Tri- State dentist was there to assign meaning.

Dr. Frank Wright, a forensic dentist, spent seven days in New York trying to help families to identify loved ones and to bring closure.

"The magnitude of what I saw in New York City, you can't even describe in words," said Wright.

Wright worked with 10 dentists while there, four from Ohio and six from California.

"We would go and search through the rubble and see if we found anything that were dental that they might not recognize as being dental. Jaw fragments, teeth, crowns, dentures, any of that kind of stuff that may not be associated with a tagged body," said Wright.

Tiernon reported that the forensic dentists worked behind the wall of pictures at the city morgue. Inside, three work loads were organized: cataloguing remains; organizing files from families' and trying to make matches.

"In this one particular chart there was a little paper, there was a note paper clipped and the note said 'Please find my daddy,'" said Wright.

Tiernon reported that Wright described ground zero as a 16-acre crime scene that evoked deep and conflicting emotions.

"I felt betrayed, I felt angry, I felt grief for all the families. Just the carnage, just the whole episode was very difficult for me," Wright said. "You can take a path of negativism, this shouldn't have happened; I'm angry this happened; this isn't fair; or you can take it and draw energy from it and say you know what, this did happen, it's not right, but I am going to do something to make this better."

Tiernon said that Wright shut down his practice while he was in New York volunteering.

Another Tri-State Group spent their time volunteering in the nation's capital.

Video

Trip Became Life Changing

After spending almost two weeks at the Pentagon disaster site, another group of Tri-Staters returned home.

The group is part of a Hamilton Bible School with a Washington, D.C., connection that allowed them to help at ground zero.

WLWT Eyewitness News 5's Anu Prakash reports that members of the Hamilton Christian Church called someone that they knew at a ministry in Washington, and within hours they were in a van headed to the nation's capital.

Prakash reports that the group never thought twice about dropping everything to help out.

The group, made up of students between 18 and 22, worked in 11-hour shifts from 5 a.m. to midnight for the better part of 11 days. WLWT reports that they were there with a helping hand and a hearty meal.

Some meals had to be taken into the Pentagon for the soldiers who didn't even have time to come outside. The soldiers that they saw in the food lines made an impression.

"The faces of the soldiers that would come and get in line for food, you could just see the unbelievable sights they had seen," said Greg Phipps, a volunteer.

Prakash reports that their makeshift camp was dubbed "Camp Unity."

The group returned on Tuesday night with countless memories from a spur of the moment trip that turned into a life-changing experience.

"To have Jesse Jackson shake your hand and say thank you and then to have Ted Kennedy say thank you -- but it's when you have some guy with dirty hands covered in soot came and say you'll never know what you've done for us, and thank you. That was our reward," said Greg Phipps.