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.

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.