Jul 3, 2002 2 min read

BOSTON (AP) – Innkeeper Sandy Knox-Johnston wanted to treat World Trade Center rescue workers and families of victims to free vacations on the exclusive island of Nantucket, off the Massachusetts coast. But only six people accepted the offer in the fall and spring.

Now, in peak summer season, Knox-Johnston is scrambling to find space for 75 hopeful vacationers through her program, Island-to-Island.

“I think the people in New York were not emotionally ready to leave until the World Trade Center site was cleared,” said Knox-Johnston, 59, whose phone started ringing in May.

The vacationers asked to come when their children were out of school and Knox-Johnston has agreed to help them find accommodations in the high season.

“We could have said ‘No’ and, ‘We’re sorry, July and August are too chaotic,”‘ Knox-Johnston said. “But that’s a very hard thing to say to people who have been working in the World Trade Center site.”

There are only 1,200 rooms registered in the Nantucket Lodging Association. Most are bed-and-breakfast inns or hotels offering rooms big enough for a couple and maybe a child. Rooms are reserved for the summer well in advance.

“It’s like having a jigsaw puzzle that you thought was supposed to be a 10-by-10-inch and finite,” said Knox-Johnston, who raised about $20,000 to fund the project. “It keeps growing and you keep trying to find the match between the pieces.” Some applicants have been offered rooms by innkeepers, private home owners and through a similar Sept. 11 respite program on Cape Cod.

Paige Hall, founder of the New York Fire Fighters and Widows Summer Vacation Project on Cape Cod, offered Island-to-Island families their vacant spots.

“Houses sit empty for weeks at a time,” Hall said. “I don’t think it’s as easy for innkeepers, but I’m finding that they’re the most generous.”

Liam Monaghan of the Hyannis Travel Inn, said offering free rooms is “a small contribution for the efforts these people made.”

Rosalie Ragucci, 39, and her firefighter husband, Raymond, secured a Cape Cod vacation through Hall’s program.

Ragucci said her husband switched shifts with a firefighter killed at the trade center and spent the week after Sept. 11 helping at the site. He was assigned there again in November.

“It is so nice to see the support and the outpouring of the people in Massachusetts,” she said.

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On the Net:

Island-to-Island: www.nantucket.net/9-11