Wednesday, September 26, 2001
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Wednesday, September 26, 2001 |
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Long day at the office Good Samaritan helps stranded foreigners
By SALLIE
SATTERTHWAITE
Like millions of other Americans, Irene Martin of south Fayette County left home on a recent Tuesday morning for just another day at the office. But there is rarely "just another day at the office" in the hospitality industry. And this Tuesday would be unlike any other in American history. Martin is director of rooms and acting general manager at the Crowne Plaza Atlanta Airport. At work when news came of the disasters in New York and Washington, she was momentarily stunned, but swung into action when she got the word: The airport was closing, and would remain closed for an unknown duration. All she knew for sure was that there would be passengers stranded indefinitely. And that she had empty rooms. Irene Martin's "day at the office" would not end for more than 40 hours. "I went over to the airport," she said. "I knew they were closing it, and I thought, 'What about the people who don't have any money and need a place to stay?' I talked to the Delta people, then I went out to baggage claim, and I finally got hold of someone from Delta who had heard a page" asking for help finding accommodations. The neediest travelers appeared to be a conglomeration of nearly 200 foreigners, most on their way to Venezuela, Chile and Mexico. Few spoke any English. And two ladies who did, en route to London, turned out to be hearing impaired. Their bags were somewhere in the grounded airplanes, they had virtually no money, no clothing or personal effects, and they were scared. Only a few children were in the group, but one tearful young woman had a six-month-old baby in her arms. Martin talked to Edward Powers with Atlanta Travelers' Aid and started to negotiate a rate. As acting manager, she had the authority to offer a rate so low it would barely cover the hotel's costs. Atlanta Tourism and the American Red Cross pledged to help offset expenses but Martin's attitude was, "We'll work something out. We gave them the lowest rate possible, and we all agreed that the food would cost [the travelers] nothing, with so much trauma going on." Martin got all the hotel's shuttles rolling, and packed her empty rooms to capacity, four travelers to a room. Communicating with her guests through her bellman Eliseo deJesus, himself from Puerto Rico, she explained that their rooms and meals had been taken care of. "My staff was great," she said. Her instructions to them were simple: "Understand, this could have been you. Imagine being stranded in a foreign country half of them had no luggage. I told them, 'We'll figure something out.'" She had her bellman ask the mom with the baby what she needed, and filled her request for apple juice and refrigerator space to store bottles. "The only word I recognized was 'telefono,'" Martin said, when guests asked to call their loved ones collect, to tell them they were safe. She was having none of that, despite high international rates. "You can't call your family collect to tell them you're safe when they've been watching that kind of news so we opened the phone lines." And if she hears from the bean-counters, she'll "work something out later." She said the same thing about raiding the gift shop to provide a shirt for a German whose bags had been left behind. The 378-room Crowne Plaza was by no means the only airport hotel that opened its doors to marooned travelers Sept. 11, Martin said, but did not know how they charged. She estimates that between 300 and 400 passengers were accommodated. By the Sunday after the disasters, most of Martin's guests had arranged for other flights and checked out, although a week later, she still had one. Martin was known to the Fayette County business community from 1998 to 2000 as the get-it-done assistant manager at what is now the Holiday Inn & Suites in Peachtree City. She also served as interim manager at Fayetteville's Holiday Inn Express. She's been with Crowne Plaza for about 18 months. The Las Vegas native insists that she did what anyone else would have done under the circumstances. "I kept picturing myself in that situation," she said, "stranded somewhere with my kids, and no money." She called her Starr's Mill area residence Tuesday night when it was obvious she wouldn't be getting home, and explained to her children, 9 and 5, that Mommy had some people to take care of. In her hotel room about 2 a.m. Wednesday, she did a little paper work before turning in. About 7 a.m., she was up "and started all over again. We were all going on adrenalin." It was about 4 a.m. Thursday before she got home to her husband and children. It had been a really long day at the office.
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