story4630.xml

story4630.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

They were standing up and some of them were crying! That is what it looked like in the reservation center where I work. Hi, my name is Debra A Jeffries and I am a manager at the Budget/Ryder-TRS Car & Truck Rental nation wide reservation center. We reserve cars and moving trucks all over the USA. As we all know, the planes were grounded that day and several days afterwards. America needed to get home to thier loved ones. Our lines were so jamed, we could hardly keep up! People were crying to us, saying that we HAD to get them home. That we were thier only chance. As an Air Force Vet, I knew that this was the begining of war on our turf as we never knew it. It seems that my training took over, as I began to cover the reservation floor helping with as many calls as I could. Staying calm, reasuring my Agents, sometimes with only a "look". They knew what I meant. Men and Women were telling us that the towers were comming down and to please get us home. With so much of America trying to get home, our fleet was shrinking...and fast! We quickly turned to our truck fleet. Yes thats right...we were sending people home in 15 passenger vans, saying to them all who are going West, North, South any direction, get in and we will drop you off as close as we can. They were traveling in Cargo vans, 15', 24' empty moving trucks with only prayer and the hope of getting home as fast as they could. In the days that followed, new policy after new policy came down from our top brass, after all we never had to do anything as vast and heart wrinching as this before. When it was all done we all here at Budget felt that we had made a difference and helped to get Americans home. We will never forget any of the Americans and our world-wide friends that did not make it home that day, but we take PRIDE in the fact that they will always have a safe "HOME" in our hearts. GOD BLESS AMERICA!