In the weeks that followed, counseling services were offered and staff were encouraged to use them. Small groups met with a chaplain, psychologist, and social worker. One-on-one counseling was also offered. As a way to personally cope, Administrative Usher Worthington White helped to coordinate these sessions. He said, “So, I tried to focus on making a difference post event, to identify what people needed and help facilitate some remedies. So instead of just sitting around feeling sorry for the fact that I wasn’t here, I tried to be helpful on the day that it happened, and I tried to be helpful post event in getting people some therapy and some communication.” Bob Scanlan chose not to think about September 11. “Actually, I try not to. It’s not that it’ll ever be forgotten. I think it’s just you have to get past it.
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If we dwell on things too long, we only find anger.” Ben Kelly followed a similar strategy. He said he suffered emotionally and physically days after September 11, as he avoided thinking about it. He experienced a tightness in his head and started having headaches. “And I realized I was just doing a lot of thinking. Coming here was just so much tension. It was getting to me a little bit. But, actually talking about it, made it feel better.” He also acknowledged the importance of family, felt grateful, and decided not to put off opportunities. “People actually were a little bit more cordial on the street,” he recalled. Roland Mesnier recounted struggling with feelings of anxiety in the days and weeks after September 11. “The first day after, the first day that I came back, I felt fine. But shortly after that, mainly in the morning I got some anxiety attacks, if you will, for several weeks. And even though my mind
white house history quarterly
In the days and weeks that followed the attacks, Dennis Hawk in the Operations Department recalled staff expressing their patriotism by adding laminated flags to their badges and flag pins to their lapels.
WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASS OCIATION
THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED