9/11 gave Temple coach a stronger sense of purpose

New Temple women's rowing coach Jason Read knows about peak performances. He stood on the platform after the United States men's Olympic eight won the gold medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics.

"Our flag raised, hearing the anthem," Read said this week, "I wept uncontrollably, on national television. I was overcome by the collision of so many thoughts and memories."

The former Temple rower, now 33, will tell you that Athens wasn't the defining experience of his life or even the last decade. In some ways, Read's gold medal is all the more remarkable because of his path, which stopped at ground zero for almost a week after Sept. 11, 2001, and never was exactly the same after.

Read still is a rower, getting to Boathouse Row just after sunrise, training to make the 2012 Olympic team, first headed for the Pan-Am Games next month in Mexico. He will do just about anything to improve his fitness, including Bikram yoga, of which Read said, "If we had this at Guantanamo Bay, there would be no need for waterboarding."

He is finishing up work on a master's degree in the study of homeland security at St. Joseph's and continues to work in the field of emergency response, as he did on 9/11.

His path after that day became more spiritual and more intellectual as he tried to make sense of what he saw in the rubble of the World Trade Center, realizing there often were no answers, only more questions.

"I became a voracious reader of modern history and current events," said Read, talking about how that led him to enroll in the master's program. "I wanted a stronger academic understanding of our national-security apparatus. . . . I already had been on the rescue squad and fire department for many, many years [since age 16]. All I could think of when I was working [at ground zero] and after I departed: How can we prevent this from ever happening again? How can I contribute?"

Read, who grew up in Princeton, was finishing his undergraduate work at Temple but also working as an EMT in Hunterdon County, N.J., as chief of operations of the Valley Rescue Squad in Ringoes. He worked into the early morning of Sept. 11, 2001, answering several calls, including a suicide. He got to bed at 6 a.m., aware that he couldn't sleep long, that he had a problem set due for an economics class.

He woke up earlier than expected, Read said, about 8:45 a.m., because he heard his mother and "the TV seemed loud." Expecting to head to Temple for class, he instead saw the TV, "was shocked at what I saw," and ran upstairs. "I started packing up my gear and a bag of clothing. I knew we would be called. I called the 911 center."

Arriving about noon, Read was put to work at a communications center in Jersey City. That night, he was ferried over to ground zero, first tasked with helping set up a treatment area at the base of the World Financial Center. He stayed for most of five days.

"I saw a tremendous unwavering spirit . . . with a singular purpose of trying to find people alive," Read said. "The sobering reality was, there weren't any survivors. . . . The destruction was cataclysmic. The pictures really don't give the sense of the enormity of it." Despite his own training, "I never thought that mortality can become reality in a nano-second," he said.

Believing that any recovery, even the smallest body part, could help identification and "provide closure" was important. "That was the only thing that kept me going. That and my training, staying detached," Read said.

He had seen people die from fires and car accidents. But what he saw at ground zero overwhelmed him, he said. He had an "academically disastrous semester" at Temple in the fall of 2001, with classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

"Your mind is in constant gymnastics mode," he said. "Rowing certainly helped. But it's difficult to wake up at 6 a.m. for practice when you have sleepless nights, after profound introspection. There's survivor's guilt, and there's also the overpowering emotion of why couldn't we have done more and how did this happen."

For months, Read said, he struggled. Usually "a voracious eater," he lost his appetite. He had a great sense of direction but would "be driving and I would forget where I was going. Or you're driving down the street and you pass a playground, kids playing with a ball. I'd have to pull over, with a profound sense of grief."

Yet 21/2 years later, Read made the Olympic team on its marquee boat, the shortest member at 6-foot, which is shorter than average for the current U.S. women's eight. Nobody ever said Read didn't carry his weight in the bow seat. Read didn't want to explain how he was able to accomplish this, other than saying his job was to "enable my teammates to go as fast as possible, to add a level of spirit and excitement that other rowers may not be able to bring to it. I had seven of the world's best rowers in front of me."

One goal now obviously is to transfer some of that spirit to the Temple women's program. Read isn't shy about setting the bar. At his initial team meeting, he said: "Winning a medal at Dad Vails isn't an objective or goal. It's a requirement."

"The competition, to be sure, is severe," Read said. "In order for us to accomplish something no one expects us to accomplish, we're going to have to work really hard and foster a really competitive and fun environment to meet our mission."

Read also is project coordinator for Hunterdon County's "complete overhaul of our 911 service. We have to be narrow-band compliant and updating computers."

He sees parallels between his two life pursuits.

"In rowing, you have to subordinate yourself to the betterment of your team, to the training the coach imposes, the really difficult lifestyle," Read said. "You're subordinating yourself because you want to win and reduce the chance of losing. That's the investment you make. Comparatively, when we have government agencies that are proprietary on information, when they're not aligned, with countervailing interests, then we miss things, signs and symptoms, the predictable surprises."

That's what he's been studying at St. Joseph's, he said, with "public safety officials, FBI agents, Secret Service agents, police chiefs, a deputy chief of the Philadelphia Fire Department," a group that Read said he finds constantly invigorating, always questioning.

The rower in their midst explains the group's focus this way: "How can we achieve full alignment?"