If you can read only one post today. let it be this one--you'll feel SO good!

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Current News - Homefront Preparations : One Thread

Monday, September 9, 2002 Return to Gander

Friendships, memories survive year later for Newfoundlanders, 'plane people'

By Al Cairns

GANDER, Nfld. -- It's said that every cloud has a silver lining. And judging from the generosity that overflowed here after the World Trade Center attacks, it seems to hold true for even the darkest cloud.

From all accounts, every one of the 6,500 trans-Atlantic air passengers forced to take refuge on this island of myth and legend when American airspace closed down last Sept. 11 was overwhelmed by the hospitality bestowed upon them.

Over the course of five days that epitomize the Newfoundland spirit, the vulnerable "plane people" were treated like family.

Newfoundlanders rallied as one to give them shelter, beds, showers, food, drinks, clothing and access to telephones and computers so they could tell loved ones they were safe.

Britons, Russians, Germans, Dutch, Chinese, Italians, Pakistanis, Arabs, Americans and people of all races and creeds were treated like gold as Newfoundlanders opened their homes, hearts and wallets.

In what is one of the most amazing and inspiring stories that came out of the 9/11 disaster, the stopover turned into a kind of mini-vacation. Locals lent plane people cars and organized hiking, sightseeing and whale-watching tours.

In the village of Gambo, hometown of legendary premier Joey Smallwood, revellers kept the pub open day and night.

"The human kindness they showed us was incredible," recalls Shirley Brooks-Jones of Columbus, Ohio.

"When the airspace opened again we were all happy that we were finally on our way, but the stronger feeling was the true gratitude and appreciation and love for all of these people."

The truth is the Newfies miss the plane people just as much.

On Wednesday, everyone who was part of this phenomenon will mourn the dead from the World Trade Center, Pentagon and the four hijacked jets. Prime Minister Jean Chretien is scheduled to attend a memorial service in Gander.

But they will forever cherish the good times and friendships.

Events in Gander inspired two songs, two books, a TV documentary, a poem, gifts of computers and a scholarship fund.

Millions in advertising dollars could never have achieved the goodwill that came from the 9/11 generosity. Passengers are returning for vacations and urging friends to do the same.

This Saturday, in England, passengers from United Airlines flight 929 will hold a reunion. Their UA 929 Web site, dedicated "to those who lost their lives in the World Trade Center attack" and "to the hundreds of people who helped us," has had almost 59,000 hits.

Says UA 929 alumnus Bob Smith: "If you have to be stranded ... then let it be somewhere as beautiful as Newfoundland, and let the people be as wonderful as the Newfies."

Miami Herald columnist Jim Defede, who'll be in Gander tomorrow signing his book The Day The World Came To Town, fell in love with the people and music while there last winter.

"It was a magical time. I don't know why the rest of you Canadians make fun of Newfoundlanders," he said.

Many pilots -- oblivious to the World Trade Center attacks -- thought it was a joke last Sept. 11 when Reg Batson, an air traffic controller handling trans-Atlantic flights at NAV Canada in Gander, told them to land immediately.

"I tried to explain," Batson recalls. "Finally I said, 'Listen guys, it's as simple as this. Land at Gander or you're going to be shot down.' "

Batson juggled all 38 flights into landing paths at Gander. The tower then brought them in and packed the jets on aprons, taxiways and two of three runways.

Gander's vast air strip -- built as a staging area for warplanes going to Britain in World War II -- had lots of room.

Judy Kantaratos of Dallas, Tex., recalled being scared when a Lufthansa pilot told of an "air attack on America."

"We had no idea if it was a nuclear attack. Then we heard a rumour the White House had been bombed. It was really terrible. Everybody had family in the United States and your first instinct was to ask, 'Where are my children, are they safe?' "

Passengers had another question: Where the hell is Gander?

Newfoundland has firm links with America. Fishermen have supplied New York and Boston for decades; Americans based in Newfoundland have taken 40,000 brides. On Dec. 12, 1985, 248 peacekeepers with the 101st Airborne Division died with eight crew when an Arrow Air jet crashed upon takeoff. The Silent Witness memorial marks the crash site.

Assuming the stopover would last days, town officials met with firefighters, schools, churches and service clubs.

"Our emergency plan dealt with plane crashes, survivors, deaths," recalls Gander Mayor Claude Elliot. "But there was nothing to deal with the sudden arrival of 6,500."

Churches, Legion halls, fire halls, service clubs and schools agreed to be giant hostels for the plane people.

"This is not something you can plan. We did it on the fly. Nobody here knew what was happening," said Salvation Army Maj. Ron Stuckless, who coordinated the volunteers.

The Salvation Army called for mattresses, bedding, blankets, food, water, diapers, toilet paper, toothpaste, soap, socks, underwear. Banks of telephones were installed at key points. Service clubs hooked up TVs. Schools set up computers for e-mail and Internet.

Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire and small businesses and charitable groups from all around donated everything under the sun. Firefighters, contractors, fishermen and ordinary folk with trucks brought home-cooked meals, boxed food and sandwiches.

The local arena was turned into a giant warehouse. The ice surface was used as a giant refrigerator.

"There was no end to it all," said Stuckless, who credits the ordinary people of Newfoundland.

"If the people out there aren't generous, you could set up as many centres as you want and it wouldn't happen," he said.

Between three and 23 hours after landing, passengers were taken from planes, registered by the Red Cross and given food and drinks. Striking school bus drivers left the picket lines and drove passengers to Gander, Gambo, Lewisporte, Glenwood and Norris Arm.

At the Gander Lion's Club, passengers were aghast upon seeing the World Trade Center horror on giant TV screens.

"It was deathly silent. We watched it over and over and over again. A planeload of people. You could hear a pin drop," Judy Kantaratos recalled.

Among the Lion's Club volunteers were Lisa Ivany and her mom, Maggie. They invited the Kantaratoses to their home for meals and showers. The Ivanys also befriended an elderly Texas couple, Herman and Vi Scheef, who only last month returned to Gander on a Newfoundland vacation.

"We had a shower. They gave us all of this food, homemade wine. Anything we wanted. Next thing we're staying the night. It was like Little House on the Prairie," Judy said.

"There was absolute trust. I'm telling you, they're all so nice. I just get cold thinking about the things they did for us."

The Ivanys were only too happy to help.

"As Newfoundlanders, we're always there to lend an ear, lend a hand, and lend a heart," Lisa said.

The Ivanys and Kantaratoses are now good friends.

Clark and Roxanne Loper ended up in Gander while returning to their Alto, Tex., ranch with two-year-old Alexandria -- the second of two orphans the couple adopted from Kazakhstan. Samantha, also two, had been with them since she was a baby.

At the Lion's Club that night, Roxanne Loper could not sleep and went to the kitchen. Lion's Club vice-president Bruce MacLeod was taking a shift to meet any overnight needs.

During the day, they were served vast meals, including a freshly caught fish fry.

"Here we were, totally disrupting their lives, costing them God knows what, and here they were waiting on us hand and foot," Roxanne Loper said.

When the plane people left, they wept and hugged locals.

MacLeod noticed a teenage girl from India. She was travelling alone and did not have any money.

"It was heart-wrenching. A couple of us dipped into our wallets. The tears were streaming down her face. She couldn't believe strangers would do this for her," MacLeod said.

The Lopers, meanwhile, were mortified upon learning the Lufthansa jet was returning to Germany. Alexandria was still a Kazakh citizen and might be detained there.

"Good old Bruce!" Roxanne Loper said. "You don't know how much I owe him. He was at the airport in 10 minutes."

The Lopers bunked in Gander that night and the next day caught a ferry to Nova Scotia and met friends in Maine.

The Lopers and MacLeods are still in close contact.

After a half-hour drive by school bus from Gander to Lewisporte, Shirley Brooks-Jones and her friend Jo Hopkins of Missouri found the Lewisporte Lion's Club tables covered in white linen. The aroma of fresh food and coffee filled their nostrils.

Later in the stay, Thelma Hooper, wife of Lewisporte Mayor Bill Hooper, invited Brooks-Jones, Hopkins and Linda Franklin of Mississippi to their home. Thelma made a "magnificent meal" and gave the women nightgowns. They showered and then slept in a real bed.

On the flight home, Brooks-Jones began collecting for a scholarship fund that now has $50,000 US. A few months ago, she returned to Gander and gave $300 cheques to 14 Lewisporte grads. She returns again next week.

A group of executives with the Rockerfeller Foundation who stayed in Lewisporte made their own donation: An $85,000 computer lab for the Lewisporte Middle School.

Bill Hooper marvelled at the plane people.

"What stands out is how all those passengers who were under so much stress and strain didn't make one complaint," he said.

At Lakewood Academy, 17 km west of Gander in Glenwood, teacher Eithne Smith helped passengers send faxes to worried relatives in 50 states and 34 countries. Werner Kolb, a Dutchman, waited hours as she tried to reach his aged mother. Finally she succeeded.

Some weeks later, Smith received a letter from Kolb: "It is not possible for me to tell you how I felt during my stay in Newfoundland. The only time I felt this way before was when I was liberated in Holland as a child in 1945. You wonderful Canadians have not changed."

To the south in Gambo, UA 929 passengers had a blast.

Sinead Hanley, of London, couldn't believe there were so many churches -- and only one pub.

But for a few days, the Trailways Pub -- with half a dozen gambling machines and pool table -- was no ordinary pub. It was jammed to the rafters, day and night, with locals and plane people who just wouldn't let it close.

Trailways owner Jack Dwyer can't remember how much beer he sold, just that it was "an awful lot."

Barmaid Maggie can't remember how little sleep she got.

"I'd get home at 6:30 in the morning and the telephone would be ringing two hours later tellin' me they were lining up outside to get in," she said.

Volunteer firefighter Jim Lane recalls "screeching in" about 30 plane people as "honorary Newfoundlanders" during a bumper party at Joey Smallwood Provincial Park, and another 50 at the Trailways Pub.

In a strange ritual that may have its origins as a subtle pay back to mainlanders for making Newfie jokes, the "screech master" dresses in fisherman's garb and directs non-Newfies to kiss a cod fish and mimic Newfie slogans, taking swigs of screech until they "gits it roight."

"I wiz that drunk meself I didn't know I was doin'," Lane said.

Lane's niece, Sharon Burry, who boarded two people at her house, chuckles at the Trailways memories.

"It was so alive ... the likes have never been seen before."

Her best friend, Beryl Russell, who also boarded guests, said the town felt "real lonely" when the plane people left.

"It was almost like a death. We wis roight depressed!"

On the UA 929 Web site, a passenger named Steve recalled how, on the last night in Gambo, he and a half dozen other passengers were under a streetlight downing a bottle of Johnnie Walker scotch whiskey while reminiscing about "the lovely hosts in Gambo" when a drunken man came staggering down the street.

When the drunk asked for cigarettes and was politely told there were none left, he said "f--- you, you bastards" and rolled on down the road.

The UA 929 crowd split their sides laughing, Steve wrote. "Finally! We found ONE person from this town who was a legitimate a--hole. It was a magic moment."

-- Anonymous, September 09, 2002

Answers

Nice post.

I hope they have some news blurbs from there on 9/11/02.

-- Anonymous, September 09, 2002


Warms my heart to know that there are still some good people out there.

-- Anonymous, September 09, 2002

so good to read heart warming instead of heart wretching!

-- Anonymous, September 09, 2002

This reminds me that there is a book I want to recommend. (Read it carefully, then save it for a stocking stuffer this Christmas.)

Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the Northe Platte Canteen, by Bob Greene.

An inspirational book about a Nebraskan community during WWII which wanted to make sure that EVERY service person who passed through North Platte on the train system would be fed well and made to feel welcome. Overwhelming odds for North Platte and surrounding towns to keep it going, on a strictly volunteer basis, for several years. I highly recommend it. I read it during my commute, sniffling through most of it.

-- Anonymous, September 09, 2002


nice...........needed a nice read. Thanks

-- Anonymous, September 09, 2002


Moderation questions? read the FAQ