The volunteers gathered for a special viewing of the New-York Historical Society's new display of artifacts, signs and photos that document the extraordinary outpouring of help that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. The museum provides text with the items, but for the volunteers and recovery workers who were there to view the exhibit, no explanation was needed.


"Cold towels. I remember the icy towels we would put in cold water and give to the firefighters when they came out," said a teary-eyed Rhonda Villamia of Queens, who went to Lower Manhattan on Sept. 17 to see how she could help, and volunteered for the next six months. "It just brings back the faces of the firefighters with all the soot. You just saw the white teeth and the white eyes."

Villamia stopped at a photo of a man she met when they stood together on West Street and handed supplies to recovery workers. "I'm seeing lots of familiar faces," she said.

The exhibit, called "Radical Hospitality," on display until

July 11, contains the ordinary objects that have become imbued with emotion-teddy bears, hard hats, a basket of Chap Stick. There are the hand-written signs from the makeshift assistance center at Chelsea Piers that tell their stories in heart-wrenching snippets: "Blood donation update," a listing of "who gets boots," instructions to volunteers that end with, "if we don't need you today, we will at another time. This will be a long process."

Many of the volunteers have kept in touch through email and at summer barbecues. Some were known even to those they had never met, like Frank Silecchia, a burly construction worker who discovered the broken beams in the shape of a cross. And there was Nino Vendome, whom everyone knew by his first name alone and whose Canal Street restaurant became a relief station. A glass exhibition case contains the frying pan his mother, Josephine, used to cook sausage and peppers, and Nino's white apron covered with patches from police departments across the country. "They would give us piles of patches, because they didn't know what to give us," Vendome said. As Vendome looked at the display, a man came over to thank him. "You're Nino. That was a great thing you did."

"There were 10,000 others," Vendome replied.

There were, in fact, more. Fourteen thousand volunteers came through St. Paul's Church alone. "We were from all walks of life and we were brought together and we were knit into this family," said Rhonda Villamia.

Keith Piaseczny, who created the scrolls of names that hung at the family viewing platform, came up beside her and they embraced. "It's a tear-jerker, isn't it," he said.

		Nearby, Mickey Kross, a firefighter who spent hours trapped after the North Tower collapsed, looked at a display of the hard hat he wore day in and day out while working on "the pile." Volunteer Christine Gonda, a close friend stood beside him. "I had the experience of being told he was gone," she said. "Missing and presumed dead," Kross added. "Then he reappeared," she said, as Kross smiled broadly. Kross spent months helping to recover the remains of those who did not reappear. He and Villamia, who met at the block-long tent set up at West and Murray streets where the workers showered and ate, remembered the often boisterous scene there.
"We spent more time in the tent than anywhere else," Kross said. "They even had bands. Wasn't Ozzy Osbourne there once? That's the way the tent was, rock and roll." "Constant activity," Villamia concurred. While the tent rocked, St. Paul's became the place for rest and contemplation. "I used to go there to lay on a bench for an hour," said Kross. "There weren't many places you could go at three in the morning." David Klein, who supervised dinners once a week at St. Paul's, recalled people who came 3,000 miles to lend a hand. "It's amazing how close you can get to someone in a 12-hour shift," he said. The recorded voices of the workers and volunteers are part of the exhibit. In one recording, Jim Traynor, a mechanic and recovery worker, recalls how he went to the church to relieve his tired feet and aching back after seeing the most horrible things he'd ever seen. "The volunteers of St. Paul's are the true heroes to me," he says. Diane Reiners coordinated the thousands who came to help, After viewing the exhibit, she recalled how she would greet new volunteers. "Welcome to our chaotic hotel of radical hospitality," she would say. The New-York Historical Society is at 2 West 77th St. 212-873-3400 or go to www.nyhistory.org.