The Lima News, Ohio
DELAWARE, Ohio — Roger Meyer always dreamed of being a police officer.
Whether it was watching “CHiPs” as a child or starting as a cadet with the Mount Gilead Police Department at 14 years old, Meyer knew his path was leading him into public safety. However, Meyer never could have imagined where that path would ultimately lead him in the immediate aftermath of the darkest day in modern American history.
Meyer began serving as a volunteer firefighter with the Village of Edison Fire Department in 1998 at 18 years old. That same year, he was sworn in as a deputy sheriff with the Morrow County Sheriff’s Office while also working full-time as a corrections officer at the Multi-County Correctional Center in Marion.
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It was at the correctional center that Sept. 11, 2001, unfolded for him. Like so many, he vividly recalls the events of his day — where he was, what he was doing, and how everything seemed to pause as a typical Tuesday morning changed the country forever.
That morning, he was assigned to transport duty at the correctional center, so he went about his responsibilities of rounding up the inmates set to be taken to the courthouse. Before he could leave, he became aware of what was unfolding in New York City, but the seemingly incidental situation hadn’t yet raised any alarms for him.
“I saw on the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center,” he told The Gazette. “At that point, like everybody else, I thought it was a small plane, so I wasn’t thinking much about it. I remember getting the inmates and heading to the courthouse for court. But when I got to the courthouse, they had it shut down because they said something about a bomb threat.”
Shortly after, Meyer found out a second plane had struck the South Tower, and that both collisions were from airliners. Meyer began to understand the deliberate attack America was under, and the gravity of what was happening set in.
With the courthouse on lockdown, Meyer and the inmates headed back to the corrections center but soon found the facility was also on lockdown. Along with the inmates, Meyer sat in the sallyport awaiting further instruction before eventually being let back into the facility.
Once he was back inside, Meyer was struck by the stark contrast to a normal day in a corrections facility. While so much chaos was unfolding elsewhere, a place where chaos typically reigned was alarmingly calm.
“Working in a correctional facility, the inmates are always wanting this or that, and we’re running back and forth,” he said. “That day, every single inmate was sitting down and watching the television. The place was just oddly quiet and calm. Nobody was arguing or fighting. It was just an odd feeling to be on day shift and have the whole facility be that calm.”
Thinking about the situation through a law enforcement lens, Meyer began to wonder what was still to come with additional threats.
“I was only 21 years old at the time. Hell, I was just a kid then. I’d never been through anything like that before,” he said. “But with my experience in law enforcement, it was just one of those situations where I knew everything was going to be a higher level of threat. I had an idea of what, from a law enforcement standpoint, was coming down the road, such as bomb threats and other threats coming in. It put me on alert myself.”
While the devastating situation underway throughout the United States was already unimaginable, the carnage had only just begun. Meyer wasn’t in front of a television when the South Tower fell, but as he opened the door to one of the cell blocks, he was instantly met with the reactions of those who had just watched it fall.
Nearly half an hour later, Meyer watched as the North Tower crumbled, completing the attacks that extended to Washington, D.C. and a rural field in southwestern Pennsylvania. Naturally, Meyer’s background in public safety led his mind to wander to the full scope of the fatalities he’d just witnessed on a television screen.
“Even when the first one went down, knowing just where the damage was to the building while not even knowing the layout of the building, I knew with the fire training I had that not everyone had gotten out,” he said. “There was no way they could have gotten out. And then knowing the size of those buildings coming down, you knew there were so many people down there outside the building, especially rescue workers. They weren’t going to be able to get clear of that building coming down.”
As search and rescue operations began taking shape that evening, emergency service departments across the country mobilized to do whatever possible to assist. In the Village of Edison Fire Department, Meyer’s fire chief was inquiring about volunteers willing to be sent to New York City. Meyer expressed his wish to go, needing only the county’s clearance for the time off.
“I sat down with the director at the time … and he said he did not have a problem with me going,” Meyer recalled. “But with me being a county employee, and having not been there for a year and having the vacation time, he needed to get that cleared through the Morrow County Board of Commissioners. So he made a phone call, and within a few hours, the board came back and said I could absolutely have the time off.”
However, the time off wasn’t authorized with pay, not that Meyer was going to let that deter him from lending his hands to the overwhelmingly daunting task facing those already in New York City.
Two days later, Meyer was heading east along with a firefighter from Ashley. Upon arriving, evening had fallen on the city, and the two were directed to the staging location. The registration services had already closed for the day, so Meyer and his traveling companion set up camp for the night in a tent on the sidewalk.
“We spent the first night in that little tent,” he said. “When we got registered the next day, the City of New York put us up in a nice hotel. We got food vouchers, and they gave us taxi service wherever we wanted to go. The only thing we had to pay for was if we wanted to use the subway system. The City payed for everything else.”
Meyer’s recollection of his first day volunteering, now three days removed from the attacks, was being dropped off several blocks away from ground zero. While many people were working all around him, Meyer was struck by how quiet the area seemed to him.
“You could see everyone working, but you couldn’t hear it. Your body just wasn’t processing that sound,” he said.
As he worked his way towards ground zero, Meyer was met with a view that defied the words one might use to describe it. To call it surreal or bizarre couldn’t properly frame the devastation in front of him.
“At nearly 21 years old, I’d certainly never seen anything like it before,” he said. “Even in my years of public safety after that, I’ve certainly never seen anything like it, of course. If I had to explain what it looked like, it would truly be the generic explanation that everyone uses. It looked like a war zone. It looks like what you see on the news from places that have been bombed.”
More than anything, Meyer said the overwhelming smells of burning debris and ash still stick with him. As he finally got to work on day one, it was an entirely different smell — and sights — that began to truly bring into focus what he’d been called to New York City to do.
“I remember that first day we were down there, we had the staging area where we were picked up to head down,” he said. “And once we got into ground zero, we were grouped up and staged again for our assignments. That first day, our staging area put us right next to the morgue. The morgue was intense, and the smell of that alone, along with all the burning debris, your body was just overwhelmed with senses from those smells and seeing what you’re seeing for the first time.”
Meyer’s efforts, which typically consisted of 12-hour shifts, mostly involved working in a chain of people, moving small debris and looking for survivors. When they’d come across a police officer or firefighter in the wreckage, he said the entire operation would immediately come to a halt as their precinct or house came in and took them away.
Meyer said he never found any survivors, but coming across human remains was a regular occurrence. “It was more (body) parts we came across,” he said.
He added, “They had more of the heavy rescue and the specialty people doing all the cutting down underneath the debris. We were mostly on top of the debris, helping to clear it and then assisting the city in any way that we could.”
Meyer also remembers the McDonald’s food trucks offering free food to all workers, and Verizon phone trucks offering satellite phones to call home. When each shift finished, police escorts would take the volunteers back to the hotel. Meyer couldn’t understand the gesture at first, so much so that he had to ask an officer one night why they’d go through the trouble. The officer’s response still stands in Meyer’s memory.
“We got into a cruiser one night, and they ran us with lights and sirens back to the hotel from ground zero,” he said. “I asked him why the lights and sirens. He told me, ‘You’re here volunteering and helping us out. This is the least we can do to get you back to the hotel to get some rest.’”
Meyer said there wasn’t much rest to be found for the first few nights as his mind raced and replayed everything he’d seen before returning to the hotel.
Meyer’s efforts at ground zero spanned just under two weeks before all volunteers were pulled after it was discovered one had been caught stealing badges and patches off fallen first responders. While two weeks can come and go regularly without anything of note happening, for Meyer, two weeks changed him forever.
“Things never really left me,” he said. “For the longest time, it was hard for me to even watch the documentaries or movies about the attacks because of the memories they’d stir.”
Despite the lasting impact, Meyer has never regretted his decision to go, and that decision also led to a career transition when he returned home.
“If I had to do it all over again, I would,” he said. “When I was out there, that’s when I got my interest in EMS, just watching the medics at work. And when I came back, I approached the captain of Morrow County EMS at the Mount Gilead station. I asked what I needed to do to join, and I ended up joining that fall.”
Morrow County EMS paid for his basic EMT training, and he began as a paid volunteer before moving to a part-time medic. Eventually, he was promoted to lieutenant before becoming Morrow County EMS’s first full-time captain. He retired in 2023, wrapping up a 25-year career in public safety.
“I think being out there and seeing that type of destruction, seeing the command system that was in place, helped me in my career in EMS,” he said. “So many people I trained and worked with in EMS would comment on how calm I was on scene. I’d tell them that anything I’m seeing here is nothing compared to where I’ve been. So I think that experience really helped me out in my career.”
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