9/11 first responder speaks at Rotary Club

A presentation by a 9/11 hero and a charity golf tournament lead off this week’s Smyrna-Vinings Patch civic club news.

Tyger Vollrath, a member of the Rotary Club of Smyrna, shared his experience as a volunteer firefighter at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001 at the club’s weekly meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 13. Vollrath, was trying to make a flight from New Jersey to Atlanta on the morning of September 11. Instead, the volunteer firefighter hitched a ride with a fire truck that was on its way to Ground Zero. He spent three days working alongside other rescue workers trying to free survivors from the debris.

“These guys, one thing they always had was hope,” he said. “You would think logically of course there’s hope. There’s a huge pile. There are going to be pockets. There are going to be survivors. Once you started trying to dig and you couldn’t, you saw there was no hope. The fire was so high, but we all worked. It became dim. For weeks they searched that pile. That’s courage.”

When Vollrath looks back on 9/11, he chooses to focus on the friends he made in the New York Fire Department, some of whom have since died from illnesses related to exposure to hazardous debris at Ground Zero, the outpouring of public support and the patriotism that followed the tragedy.

“If there’s anything I want to take away, it’s those three things,” he said. “In this country, what might have been our worst tragedy might have been our finest moment. I wish I could bottle it up; that brief time when everybody was together. We weren’t Muslim. We weren’t Christian. We weren’t white. We weren’t black. We weren’t different. We were just Americans.”

The Rotary Club of Smyrna meets every Tuesday at 12:15 at the . Next week’s meeting will feature a presentation by Dick Yarbrough, syndicated columnist.

There are still spots available to compete in the Smyrna Business Association’s Fourth Annual Golf Tournament, Thursday, Sept. 15 at Dogwood Golf Club, 4702 Flint Hill Road in Austell. The individual player’s package is $99 and covers cart and green fees and a buffet lunch. The four-person team package is $375 and includes fees and a buffet lunch for the entire team.

Registration begins at 7:30 a.m. This four-person scramble-format tournament kicks off with a shotgun start at 8:30 a.m. All proceeds from the tournament benefit the SBA scholarship program, the annual police and firefighter appreciation barbecue, , and the school supplies for underprivileged children-fundraiser. Registration can be completed online. Checks should be made payable to the Smyrna Business Association.

In other Smyrna-Vinings civic club news, the meets Wednesday at noon at The Vinings Club. The guest speaker is Frank Boykin, CFO of Mohawk Industries.

The will also have its weekly meeting Wednesday from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Smyrna Community Center.