I thought I knew the story. Several books, news articles and a Tony-award winning Broadway show had told it thoroughly, compassionately and musically. But I didn’t. Not really, beyond the headlines from years ago and documented since.
On Sept. 11, 2001, some 38 planes were forced to land at a remote airfield in Gander, Newfoundland. More than 6,500 passengers were stranded far from their destinations when U.S. airspace was abruptly closed. Locals – Newfies – dropped everything to assist. Lifelong friendships and at least one marriage resulted. It was a bright spot of human kindness during a dark, dark time.
Like the details behind most meant-to-be, quickly-digested news there is so much more nuance, heartache, joy and resilience layered in the story of what unfolded in the 126 hours between the time the first diverted plane landed and the last was allowed to depart. And the passage of more than 20 years has also enriched what is more than a feel-good story, as I discovered last week.
A friend and I exchanged books on a recent late summer evening. I gave him Rob Delaney’s hardcover, “A Heart the Hurts,” and he shared the paperback “The Day the World Came to Town” by Jim DeFede. I knew this friend, who I worked with at Logan Airport at the time of the 9/11 attacks, wasn’t one to dwell on those days, so this accounting had to be meaningful if he was suggesting I read it.
It was. This is what I learned beyond my broad sense of the generosity Newfoundlanders showed to their unexpected guests.
First, there’s Newfoundland’s proper pronunciation. It’s Newfin-land, as if it rhymes, including the emphasis on the first syllable, with “understand,” and said, if you want to get it exactly right, very fast. A Canadian province only since 1949, the region has its own distinct time zone, dialect and culture. The area’s remoteness inspires a neighbor relying on neighbor ethos amongst the community. Its fishing and timber industry is long faded along with a once prominent role as a must-stop for U.S. military and commercial aircraft to refuel at an airfield capable of handling the emergency landing of the space shuttle.
It was on that airfield in Gander that pilots headed to the United States in the cockpits of an alphabet soup of airlines – Aer Lingus to Lufthansa to Virgin Air – were ordered to land, along with many others across Canada, if they couldn’t turn around and return to Europe.
I learned that once on the ground some passengers had to stay onboard the aircraft for more than 30 hours, as Canadian authorities tried to put in place adequate screening protocols and determine if there were additional terrorists posing as passengers and intending harm, a fear that hadn’t abated even when the planes were finally released to leave days later.
I learned that striking school bus drivers dropped their work stoppage and lined up to ferry the passengers to churches and schools and community centers.
There were children, including some newly adopted from Russia, whose families had already traveled thousands of miles — the literal kind, and the figurative red-tape kind. Some of the children were headed to a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Disney World, others were celebrating birthdays. Newfies found themselves dressing up as princesses and Santa Clauses to shower the children with toys and cake, but more important the lesson of showing kindness to strangers.
And in the true spirit of international air travel, there were refugees and princesses alongside one-star generals and CEOs, including the head of a world fashion brand whose company arranged a private jet to evacuate him. He ultimately canceled it in favor of sleeping on a cot in fellowship with fellow passengers.
There was a Beatles’ cover band which brought throngs of passengers crowded into a local pub to tears with its rendition of Lennon’s “Imagine.”
And there were monkeys.
At some point after the passengers were deplaned, animal shelter workers realized there must be cats and dogs in the cargo holds who hadn’t been fed or cared for in any way for hours. They were right, and when they reached them, they found hungry, thirsty and lonely pets. And they found a pair of rare Bonobos monkeys enroute to a zoo in Ohio. Somehow the authorities were convinced to let all the animals be removed and kept in a hangar where a local vet provided medical care and volunteers provided so much play and attention that a purebred cocker-spaniel puppy had to be secreted out of the hangar to a veterinary practice only to discover the dog wasn’t ill, just exhausted.
There was an orthodox rabbi who couldn’t leave Gander even when his flight was available because the timing fell on Shabbat and he had a sense that there was a reason he was stranded there. The reason became clear when an older local man made his way to see the rabbi and confessed he had hidden his Jewish identity most of his life after he was sent out of eastern Europe by his family. His stepfamily, resettled in Newfoundland, didn’t allow him to discuss his background. To the stranger-rabbi, who should have been at his destination in New York not Canada, the local man for the first time showed scars and wounds he had suffered as a young Jewish boy beaten in the streets of Poland.
And there were New Yorkers, including the parents of a firefighter who had responded to Ground Zero and was missing. And a state police leader who worked in the World Trade Center offices of New York’s governor, trying to determine the fate of co-workers and friends, and chafing that he couldn’t be on the scene to help. What you may not get from a passing understanding of the plight of the “plane people” who were “from away” is how unbearable it was being unable to get home in those situations.
So much worry and fear, alleviated as best the Newfies could manage with stews and sandwiches, donated blankets and towels, sightseeing drives around town and even showers offered in their private homes.
In the edition of the DeFede book I borrowed, there was an afterword included by the author about a return trip he took to Gander near the 20th anniversary and visits he made with some of the passengers who had long returned home. The passage of time didn’t dull the sheen of true compassion shown by the local community or the impact felt even decades later by those stranded. But it did deepen DeFede’s understanding of these real human beings. “In Gander,” he writes, “we are reminded people get divorced, friendships end and families struggle with unemployment, alcoholism and drug abuse. In other words, life is not a musical.”
Some of the romances started in Gander burned out, there’s jealousy over who got celebrated for their generosity on world stages, the young children are now grown, the secretly Jewish man died and was buried in a Catholic cemetery, the state police leader still suffers guilt from not being in New York that day, the firefighter’s mother mourns her son and now deceased husband every day.
It is a fuller story than we knew. And it burns brighter for it in the darkness.
