Mill Creek man helps victims from Pentagon attack handle aftermath
By Scott North
Herald Writer
MILL CREEK — His battlefield was the Pentagon, where men and women wrestled with the carnage left by terrorism.
His weapons were smiles and kind words and Beanie Babies, stuffed animals resembling puppies and puffins.
It wasn’t long after terrorists crashed a hijacked jetliner into the Pentagon on Sept. 11 that Chuck Wright of Mill Creek scrambled to Washington, D.C., as part of the American Red Cross national disaster team.
A licensed counselor and family therapist, Wright, 57, joined a group of mental health professionals sent to help with the emotional aftermath.
For more than three weeks starting on Sept. 21, Wright talked with attack survivors, military officials, federal agents, police, firefighters and others struggling to come to grips with the gruesome aftermath of the fiery crash, which claimed 188 lives. The air was heavy with the odor of seared flesh.
"The smell. If anything, you remember the smell," Wright said early this week.
A retired state Corrections Department supervisor and president of the board for Everett-based Families and Friends of Violent Crime Victims, Wright is familiar with violence and fire.
When he arrived at the Pentagon, the flames were out and specially trained dogs sniffed for the remains of cadavers. Searchers gathered up the small pieces of flesh from bodies sundered by the explosion. Sometimes the only items found were jewelry, or in one case a bronze medal, speckled with droplets of its owner’s blood.
There was reluctance among many at the scene to discuss the tragedy.
That’s where Beanie Babies helped, Wright said. The small, stuffed animals broke the silence, broke the ice.
It didn’t matter if the person was an FBI agent or a three-star general, Wright said. When he saw someone hurting, he’d hand them a stuffed animal.
"I’d say, ‘You know, you look like you need a puffin,’ " he recalled.
Often, that would lead to deeper discussions. He’d give somebody a stuffed dog. They’d mention their real pooch at home. Talk would shift to the cadaver dogs sniffing through the rubble.
"And then they’d mention the smell," he said.
One woman whose forehead was scorched by fire told how her co-workers on either side of her desk had been terribly burned. She spoke of a dark shape hurtling over her desk during the blast, and realized later that it was somebody she knew. Then there was the soldier who was tortured by his decision to leave the Pentagon instead of rushing to save others.
Wright said he tried to help people understand that their thoughts were natural and part of the healing after a traumatic event.
He did not mention "closure."
"There is never, ever closure for these people," Wright said. "Death of a loved one means there is always that void."
That is a lesson Wright learned as a member of the Sno-King Arson Response Team, the task force that in February 1993 captured Paul Kenneth Keller, one of the nation’s worst serial arsonists. The investigation lasted six months and brought task force members to more than 100 burning homes, churches and businesses in four counties. Three people died.
Wright was assigned to help fire victims deal with their grief. In time, many of the task force members — firefighters, detectives and federal agents — turned to him for help in putting the ugly experience behind them.
Wright’s Pentagon service took him away from Mill Creek during the middle of a campaign for a seat on the city council. He’s trying to make up for lost time.
Mary Kay Voss, Wright’s opponent in the council race, praised his service but said she is the best candidate because of her business and organizational skills.
"I give him a lot of credit for being involved with the Red Cross and taking three weeks out of his life and doing something very difficult," Voss said.
Wright said that he knew the Pentagon duty would have an impact, and that’s happened, including nightmares of people dying in plane crashes. But confronting carnage also has highlighted how good life can be.
It hit him as the plane that carried him home circled over Puget Sound, Wright said.
"I said, ‘Look down, Chuck. There are a lot of people smiling. A lot of people happy.’ "
You can call Herald Writer Scott North at 425-339-3431 or send e-mail to north@heraldnet.com.
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