Volunteers prep millions of meals for fellow New Yorkers on 24th anniversary of 9/11

NEW YORK (AP) — When longtime friends David Paine and Jay Winuk set out to encourage people to take part in volunteer and service projects on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, their goal was simple: to turn a day of unimaginable tragedy into a day for doing good.

Now, as the nation prepares to mark the 24th anniversary of 9/11, that lofty mission has evolved into a national day of service where people across the country participate in projects that honor the nearly 3,000 dead.

The nationwide effort kicked off Wednesday as thousands of volunteers began assembling packaged meals for needy New Yorkers in a festive atmosphere aboard the USS Intrepid.

Teams of volunteers filled small plastic bags with various ingredients for making a kind of jambalaya, including uncooked rice, dehydrated vegetables, lentils, salt and other seasonings, as a DJ blasted upbeat tunes from the wing of an aircraft carrier-turned-museum.

“The vision was to create a ritual,” said Winuk, co-founder and executive vice president of 9/11 Day, the nonprofit organizing the event. “We couldn’t know that it would continue to resonate with people more than two decades later.”

The two-day event, which runs through Thursday, aims to package more than two million meals for local food banks. It is among 25 large-scale volunteer service projects being organized in some two dozen cities across the country, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle.

Overall, 9/11 Day estimates some 30 million Americans will participate in some form with the day of service, which Congress enshrined into law in 2009.

Beside meal packing, volunteers will be taking part in food and clothing drives, park and neighborhood cleanups, blood banks and other community events, the organization says. Even smaller acts of kindness count, like greeting strangers on the street or holding the door for someone.

“It’s really just meant to be a day when we remember and rekindle the way we all felt and the way that we all behaved in the immediate aftermath of the attack,” said Paine, who co-founded 9/11 Day and serves as its president. “When we weren’t red states or blue states. We were just human beings wanting to help one another.”

Winuk says it’s been “gratifying” to see Americans embrace the call to service and good deeds. His brother, Glenn Winuk, died on Sept. 11 while serving as volunteer firefighter and EMT.

“Glenn would have been first in line for this kind of thing. He lived his life and died in service to other people,” he said.

The call seems to be resonating in particular with the some 100 million younger Americans born after the 2001 attacks, Paine added.

“The amazing thing about 9/11 was that it brought our country together in a way that we had never experienced before, and I think there’s a longing for that sense of unity again,” he said. “I think that’s especially true for young people deeply discouraged by the kind of division, divisiveness, that they are feeling.”

John Danyliouk was among the young volunteers taking part in the meal pack for the first time.

The 25-year-old Queens resident said he was just a year old when the attacks happened and said his mother would talk about the trauma of being in lower Manhattan at the time.

“Being able to see 9/11 as the day of remembrance and service instead of a day that’s tragic, to change that viewpoint and have people come out and give back, I think, is a really good thing,” Danyliouk said.

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