The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland (13 page)

I
t was Wednesday night at the Lions Club and Lisa Cox was bored. Apart from watching the nonstop news coverage on television, there wasn’t a lot for the eighteen-year-old to do at night. Bruce MacLeod and Stan Nichol joked with her that once her mom went to bed, they would take her and her sister out barhopping around town. Lisa would brighten up and say, “Really.” And they would laugh and say, “Maybe.” But they were only teasing her, and so at night she just paced around the hall. She spent a lot of time helping parents care for some of the babies and young children at the Lions Club, a particularly poignant sight given everything Lisa had been through in the last two years with her cancer and the sad reality that she’d never be able to have children of her own.

Hans Larson, the president of the Lions Club, could see she was feeling a bit antsy. A big, lovable walrus of a man, Larson handed her the keys to his van and told her she could go out to the parking lot and listen to music. She was thrilled to be able to be by herself for a little while. Larson’s taste in music veered toward country. which wasn’t Lisa’s favorite, but she did find some old Eric Clapton tapes. She cranked up Larson’s stereo, closed her eyes, and imagined herself back home—even if it was just for an hour or so.

H
annah and Dennis O’Rourke returned to St. Joseph’s Wednesday night for evening Mass, and Father Heale made a special point of mentioning their plight.

“There is a couple here who are missing a son,” he announced, “and I ask you to remember them particularly in your prayers.”

In the back of the church, Tom Mercer craned his neck to see who Father Heale was talking about. Mercer was from Port Albert, a town of about eighty-five people on the northeast coast of Newfoundland. On September 11, he’d driven eighty miles from his home to offer himself as a volunteer in Gander. Mostly he had been providing rides around town to any of the passengers who needed one. In two days he had taken dozens of passengers to the mall. He gave a few a sightseeing tour of the area. And then, earlier that night, a group of women from Spain who were staying at Gander Collegiate, wanted to attend evening Mass. Mercer piled them into his car—a brand-new Pontiac—and delivered them to St. Joseph’s.

The sixty-five-year-old Mercer isn’t Catholic—he’s Protestant—but he decided to stay for the service so he could give the women a ride back to their shelter. After Mass, as is customary, everyone went next door to a meeting room where coffee and tea were served. Mercer felt drawn to the O’Rourkes. He went over to them and told them how sorry he was to hear about their son and that he’d keep them in his thoughts and prayers.

Mercer was struck by what good and decent people the O’Rourkes appeared to be. They were all the same age, so he naturally tried to imagine how he would hold up if it had been his son who was missing.

Lisa Zale and Sara Wood outside the Knights of Columbus.
Courtesy of Sara Wood

C
ontinental Flight 5 passengers Deb Farrar, Winnie House, Lana Etherington, and Mark Cohen had been at George and Edna Neal’s home in Gambo for a couple of hours watching the news reports from the United States when the couple excused themselves from the group. George had been sizing up his guests, trying to get a sense of what kind of people they were, and came to the conclusion that he liked them. He asked Edna her impression. She liked them, too. They seemed like a nice mix of young people, she said.

“Why don’t we ask them to stay?” George suggested.

Edna thought it a splendid idea.

George didn’t have to wait long for an answer. Given the choice between sleeping in the floor of the church or staying in the Neals’ comfortable home, they decided on the comfortable home. Lana couldn’t help but think to herself that there wasn’t another place like this on earth. Where else would a couple invite four outsiders into their home for the night?

To celebrate their newfound friendships, they decided to go out to dinner. Choosing a place to eat wasn’t hard. There’s only one restaurant in Gambo: Sheila’s. George knew it well. He used to own it. Under his care it was called, matter-of-factly, Roadside Restaurant. In 1981, he sold it to Sheila.

The menu is typical Newfoundland cuisine, which is to say it mostly involves cod. Baked cod. Broiled cod. Deep-fried cod. Panfried cod. Everyone was glad to get out of the house, glad to be away from the television.

In addition to Continental Flight 5, passengers from five other planes had been brought to Gambo. All told, nearly 900 “plane people” found themselves in this remote hamlet. The Society of United Fishermen opened their social hall to accommodate about a hundred passengers. The United Church took in 75, the Anglican Church 140, and the Catholics hosted an even hundred. Down at the volunteer fire department, the fire trucks were moved outside the station so cots could be set up in the engine bays to accommodate 120 people. Others were moved to the Smallwood Academy, the town’s only school, which educated Gambo’s children from kindergarten right on through the twelfth grade.

From house to house, people stripped their closets of extra bedding, blankets, and pillows and carried them to various shelters. When word spread that the passengers didn’t have access to their luggage and had been wearing the same outfits for nearly two days, piles of old—and in some cases new—clothes magically started appearing. In the neighboring small towns of Glovertown and Dover and Hare Bay, the women decided to pitch in by cooking meals, which were delivered each day to Gambo by a caravan of cars.

Any passenger wanting to take a shower needed only to tap one of the locals on the shoulder to ask. Often they didn’t even needed to do this, as people would just walk into one of the shelters and ask aloud: “Who’d like a shower?” Anyone who raised his hand was invited home. Most passengers, however, were still getting their bearings Wednesday evening and remained close to their respective shelters. As a result, George, Edna, Deb, Lana, Winnie, and Mark had no trouble finding a table at the restaurant. The one familiar face they did see belonged to Bill Cash, the animated Texas millionaire from first class. They couldn’t help but tease Bill about the good fortune they’d had running into George and Edna and the comfy confines they would now be enjoying.

By the time dinner was completed, they noticed Bill had moved from his table and sidled up to George. Hoping to wrangle an invitation to the house as well, Bill employed all his charm and social skills. He was eager to avoid sleeping on a cot at the firehouse. He had even toyed with the idea of buying one of the houses in Gambo—they were only a few thousand dollars—but they were unfurnished. Before long, George was checking with the others to see if it was okay for Bill to join them. How could they refuse? Especially once Bill agreed to buy all the drinks at the pub that night.

They piled into George’s red van and off they went. Around 8
P.M.
they finally reached the promised land, the Holy Grail of the day’s excursion: Gambo’s Trailways Pub. A simple wooden building on a dirt lot, the pub looked a little seedy from the outside. Winnie didn’t say anything, but it reminded her of the kind of bars they have on the outskirts of Houston, bars a black person would never go into.

Winnie couldn’t help but notice that she was the only black person in town.

The pub was undergoing renovations the week of September 11, but decided to open up anyway in honor of the stranded passengers. There was a temporary bartop set up along one wall, the ceiling was half torn down, and the stage was still under construction.

Regardless of the state the place was in, the pub wasn’t about to close its doors during a civic emergency. For the duration of the plane people’s stay, the pub would be open damn near twenty-four hours a day, closing only long enough to hose the place down and give the bar staff a chance to sleep.

The pub was jumping with people when George and his newfound friends arrived. Bill gave his credit card to the bartender and told him to start a tab for the group. The jukebox was playing a mix of rock, country, and Newfoundland’s own brand of music from groups such as Great Big Sea, the Ennis Sisters, and Buddy Wassisname. Everyone in the group was feeling good again. Since the only one among them who was single was Deb, the others decided to play matchmaker and find her a man.

“We’ve got to hook you up with somebody.” Winnie laughed.

One of the oilmen from first class made a run at Deb, but she brushed him off. He was a little too sure of himself. Not her type.

Finally she spotted somebody. He was about six feet tall. Looked to be in his early thirties. He was fit, without being too muscular. Good-looking but not a pretty boy.

“See that guy over there,” she whispered conspiratorially to Lana and Winnie. “Don’t you think he looks cute?”

“Oh yeah,” Lana said. Winnie agreed.

“How are we going to get him over here?” Lana asked.

Before Deb could think of an answer, Winnie was on her feet.

“Watch this,” she told the others. Pointing to the guy across the room, she shouted, “Hey, you, come here!”

Waving one hand over her head as if she were twirling a lasso, Winnie tossed her imaginary rope in the guy’s direction and pretended to pull him in. Not needing much more encouragement, the man walked over to the table. Winnie moved an empty chair between her and Deb and told him to have a seat.

“I’d like to introduce you to Deborah,” Winnie said.

Deb was blushing, but she didn’t mind.

His name was Gregory Curtis, a thirty-one-year-old first lieutenant in the United States Marines. He’d been on his way home to North Carolina following a six-month deployment in Bosnia when his flight was diverted.

O
utside the Knights of Columbus building, Lisa Zale and Sara Wood were creating quite a stir with their tent. With the help of one of the other passengers, they set up the green-and-white nylon abode on the front lawn, covered the floor of the tent with the two air mattresses, and placed a pair of sleeping bags inside. To block out the noise from the traffic on the street, they donned the Bose headphones they’d taken with them from their seats in first class. And next to their tent they parked their Wal-Mart shopping cart.

Some of their fellow passengers thought they were crazy until they went to bed that night. Just as Zale had predicted, the accommodations inside the Knights of Columbus building were cramped and noisy. There was a cacophony of snores that kept some passengers awake, and by midnight, Zale and Wood noticed some of the passengers whining to one another in the parking lot: Why didn’t we get tents and air mattresses?

O
ver in Glennwood, a speck of a town east of Gander and just across the river from Appleton, Janet Shaw volunteered for the graveyard shift at the Salvation Army church. There were about fifty passengers sleeping on mattresses on the church floor and Shaw was there in case someone needed something during the night. She was happy to volunteer. She’d already opened her home and allowed anyone who wanted to clean up to come over and use her shower. The hard part, she soon realized, was keeping enough clean towels on hand. For two days her washer and dryer seemed to be in constant use.

Sitting in the darkened church, Shaw was happy for the peace and quiet. Most of the passengers assigned to stay in the church were asleep by midnight, but she knew a few of the men had gone down to the Moosehead Lounge for something to drink. She would have been able to get a little sleep herself if it hadn’t been for the telephone ringing. Every hour a woman called looking for her son, Bill Fitzpatrick. She’d been told he was staying at the church. After gently waking all of the men in church to see if they were Fitzpatrick, Shaw realized he must be one of the guys who was down at the pub.

She called down to the Moosehead and had Fitzpatrick paged, but no one answered. Finally, around 3
A.M.
, Fitzpatrick arrived at the church. As soon as Shaw heard the door open, the sixty-four-year-old woman pounced.

“Just where have you been?” she scolded.

She didn’t even give him a chance to answer.

“And who do you think you are keeping me up half the night talking to your mother? Did you even realize your mother was worried about you?”

As Shaw berated him, the thirty-eight-year-old Fitzpatrick just stood there with his head hanging low. For those inside the church, it was a marvelous show. Here was this little old woman scolding this fellow who must have been at least a foot taller. As they like to say in these parts, she was “giving him the devil.”

“Now you go give your mother a call,” Shaw wrapped up. “Right now.”

As Fitzpatrick skulked away, several of the other passengers applauded.

A
fter working thirty-eight hours without any sleep, Gary Vey was beat. The president and chief executive officer of the Gander International Airport Authority, he is the man in charge at the airport. Unfortunately, on September 11, Vey wasn’t in Gander; he was attending an international conference of airport leaders in Montreal. Ironically, one of the main topics that had been discussed was airport security.

The images of planes being used as weapons left everyone at the conference sickened. And with airspace closed over all of North America, they were stranded at a time when their own airports were dealing with an unprecedented crisis. Rather than waiting for airspace to open so he could fly back to Gander, Vey rented a car and drove more than six hundred miles to the eastern edge of Nova Scotia, where he caught a ferry for a six-hour boat ride across Cabot Strait to the Newfoundland town of Port aux Basques. From there he had an eight-hour drive to Gander.

He drove straight to the airport, and when he arrived Wednesday afternoon, he was proud to see how well his staff, and for that matter the entire town, had responded to this emergency. His second-in-command, Geoff Tucker, was running the airport’s command center and dealing with all of the airlines. Vey left Tucker in charge of the command center while he dealt with other problems as they came up. By about four o’clock in the morning, however, he was starting to wear down. He decided to go home, shower, and catch a couple of hours’ sleep before returning to the terminal to handle the next crisis.

Not wanting to wake his wife, he quietly showered in the hallway bathroom and decided to sleep in their guest bedroom. The room was dark as he dropped his towel and climbed into bed, wearing nothing more than wet hair and a weary expression on his face.

And that’s when he realized he wasn’t alone. He was in bed with a seventy-year-old woman from Fort Worth, Texas, whom Vey’s wife, Patsy, had befriended at one of the shelters and decided to take home. Remarkably, the woman was still asleep. Vey gingerly stood up, covered himself with his towel, and retreated to his own bedroom.

“We’ve got company, I see,” he told his wife when they both awoke the next morning.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s a lovely lady from one of the flights.”

She told her husband she couldn’t stand the thought of this old woman spending a night sleeping on the floor of a classroom at Gander Academy. So she’d brought her home and tried to show her a good time. Well, he said with a laugh, he almost showed her more than that.