For 25 years, Echterling has helped pick up the psychological pieces from the devastation wrought by fires, tornadoes, floods and now terrorists. Here a firefighter wipes the grime from his eye following a practice rescue of a fellow firefighter trapped in a mock roof collapse.

The blood drive last September at JMU's Convocation Center was like thousands held around the country in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Students, townspeople and professors all waited patiently. Giving blood was something tangible they could do in response to the horrific tragedy that had hit the nation.

Among the donors was JMU psychology professor Lennis Echterling. "Lennie," as his name tag said, walked along the waiting line, "working the room," as he calls it, chatting and striking up casual conversations with those around him. A Red Cross staffer swabbed students' arms with antiseptic. "He was talking about his buddies," Echterling says, "Marines killed at the Pentagon. He was dealing with powerful emotions. He needed to talk about it. Talking is a way of making meaning."

In one way or another we all seek meaning after experiencing a disaster, whether natural or man-made, says Echterling, who for two decades has counseled the victims and rescue workers of disasters like killer Midwestern tornadoes, epic floods and now mass terrorism. In the case of Sept. 11, everyone was a victim, he says, whether he or she had a connection with someone who was killed or just saw the event on television. No one was immune from the effects. Everyone, including all of campus, felt the need to check on and connect with their loved ones. Sadly, the JMU community lost three alumni at the World Trade Center, Bruce Simmons ('83), Craig M. Blass ('96) and Matthew Douglas Horning ('97).
Now, one month away from the anniversary of that awful day, the anguish might return for some. "Sept. 11 is one we'll never forget," says Echterling, who also specializes in the painful psychological compounding of the anniversary effect. "Memories of the event will be evoked. People will convene again, often experiencing some of the same emotions again. People will be continuing on with their grieving."

The grief was palpable last October, when Echterling was called to the Pentagon as part of a crisis team during a memorial for the victims.
"I would go to where [the families] were having lunch, and I'd get some food and ask the families, 'can I sit here?' I introduce myself and then begin hearing their stories," Echterling says. "In times of crisis, people have a need for that. And if you're there to bear witness to their experience, then you don't have to coax it out of them."

His questions and conversations were designed to focus positive energy on an impossible situation. "Just encouraging people to have an emotional catharsis is not the answer alone," Echterling's research and field experiences have shown. "Re-experiencing the trauma is not likely to lead to resolution. Taking action and making a difference is just as, and perhaps more, valuable."

This concept lies at the epicenter of Echterling's professional approach to counseling disaster victims through the feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, confusion, responsibility and loss. He has been called on to implement this approach as both a counselor and as an adjunct faculty member of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Institute of Mental Health.

"The focus is on helping folks to progress through a resolution emphasizing their strengths, their resilience, the support they've received, their creativity. These are positive aspects about crisis resolution," he explains. "Your work as a helper at that time is to hear the crisis story but to look for the survivor in the crisis. In other words, be curious about things, like how did you manage to escape that situation or where did you find the strength to face what you needed to be doing at that time, how did you come up with that idea of sharing?"

Giving blood, something that thousands of Americans did after Sept. 11, was a positive response. And it was the act that was important, Echterling says, not the blood. The Red Cross ended up with much more blood than it could use and even had to dispose of the surplus, he notes.

"We need to address the experience of disaster by making meaning." Echterling says. "We need not only to look at our emotions of fear, anger and grief, but also at our emotions of love, courage and hope. We need not only to look at the act as a disaster, but to recall also the acts of courage that it generated," he says.

Natural disasters often evoke a sense of inevitability because of their sheer scale and power, he says. Victims' search for meaning often triggers a reassessment of their personal theology. "If God is all loving, why wasn't I protected?" West Virginia flood victims asked of Echterling and clergy on the scene.

For survivors of man-made disasters like Sept. 11, Echterling says, there is a vital difference. "You have a psychological reaction that really emphasizes a sense of anger and outrage and hostility," he says. "Here you will have the anger and hostility focused in on 'who are the perpetrators?'"

The list often includes the survivors themselves as initially they strive to take control of the chaos and grasp at making meaning. They question their own role in the tragedy, Echterling says: "'Why didn't I ask her to stop by the post office before going to work in the World Trade Center,' for instance? 'If I had, she'd be alive. If only I'd driven him to work like I'd promised, he would not have been in the subway.'"

As an activist, however, Echterling soon starts people on the journey from victim to survivor, and that depends on personal and positive action. Among the most important steps are finding meaning and making meaning. Found meaning comes from outside, like the many broadcasts and articles that offered context and information about radical fundamentalist Islam, American security, foreign policy and perceptions of Americans around the world.

While finding meaning relies on outside sources, making meaning is more personal and comes from within, Echterling says. In the wake of the terrorism, schoolchildren created games and assumed the role of rescue worker, soldier or policeman, and, yes, terrorist. "Play is an excellent way of internalizing a traumatic and painful circumstance."

One way of making meaning is taking action, which often can result in significant public good. When 13-year-old Cari Lightner was killed by a drunk driver, Echterling says, her mother, Candace, created the now potent action group Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. She became an advocate. So have Jason Sfaelos ('96) and friends, who are raising funds for a commemorative scholarship for his best friend, Craig M. Blass ('96). Classmates of Matthew Douglas Horning ('97) are doing the same. "My friends and I are trying to do our part by raising money for this scholarship," Sfaelos says. Craig "was a dear friend who many of us miss dearly and will continue to do so for the rest of our lives."

The outpouring of public support for firefighters, police and emergency medical technicians who rushed to the aid of victims of the attacks is a further example of taking action and making meaning. Even far from Ground Zero, people went out of their way to thank rescue workers in their own communities. Flying the American flag in a show of patriotic solidarity was another display. So were the testimonials people gave of their experiences. "Those are not formal therapy, but I see them as very powerfully therapeutic and healing [as people] take on that identity of a survivor."

Disasters certainly are times of high emotional engagement. The trick is to channel personal emotion into positive action. Some events are so potent, that they never lose meaning. They become part of survivors' identities, Echterling says. Even 60 years later, for example, many Pearl Harbor survivors ask to be buried with those who perished in the attack. For the most immediate survivors, Sept. 11 will carry just as searing a mark, Echterling supposes.

He has come to his conclusions through years of research and counseling disaster victims and the rescue workers and clergy who deliver aid. He has written as well about community response and the recovery process, including, with Mary Lou Wylie, a chapter in Response to Disaster: Psychosocial, Community and Ecological Approaches. He is collaborating now on his third book with colleagues Jack Presbury and Ed McKee. Echterling's achievement is recognized by others also, like the media and fellow mental health professionals who seek his expertise. The Association for Counselor Education and Supervision gave him the 2002 Counseling Vision and Innovation Award last spring.

Echterling's counseling sessions are not quite so clean and sterling. They take place not in a quiet office, but up to his knees in the same water, mud, ashes and wreckage as the victims and rescue workers. He is on the scene during the sandbagging, picking through the tornado-strewn neighborhood, at the community relief center or on the back of the firetruck. He returns later to visit churches, schools, hospitals, firehouses and police stations.
In the aftermath of the catastrophic Virginia and West Virginia floods of 1985, he saw how children recounted their experiences and exposed their fears through paintings and drawings and play. Adolescents, he noticed, were more apt to write poems or songs or become involved with relief efforts.

Adults also joined in relief efforts, but made scrapbooks and photo albums of their experiences too. "They also made downward comparisons, meaning they tended to see their experiences as not being as bad as somebody else's," Echterling says.

The elderly surprised him. He expected their physical and occasional mental frailty to make them feel more vulnerable. Not so, he found. Given their longer lives, they tended to have lived through many difficulties and were first to put the event into perspective.

Emergency responders, he discovered, often become victims in a sort of inverse way. Police officers, firefighters and med-techs often submerge their feelings behind a mask of professionalism and deflect attention with comments like, "'Oh, I'm no hero,'" Echterling says. "'I was just doing my job.'"

The counselor won't let that be, however. As a consultant and adviser to the Critical Incident Stress Debriefing Team for the Central Shenandoah Emergency Medical Services Council, he trains peer counselors and assists rescue workers dealing with traumatic experiences like a close call, the death of a child or an incident they could not avert.

All of Echterling's life-altering interventions converge in a positive approach to life and faith in humanity. "What drew me to this whole area to begin with, crisis and trauma, was what incredibly inspiring work it is," he says. "People often ask me why in the world I want to do this kind of work. Yes, it is very distressing and, at times, I'm emotionally affected by seeing the kinds of trauma and consequences. But the courage and inspiration and resilience I see, it's just amazing what people are able to do. I have wonderful memories regarding these people who I'm happening to connect with at a very stressful time."

Story by John Ross and Pam Brock
Photo by Ian Bradshaw