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

Communicating with them was going to be difficult since no one in the church spoke Russian. As for the refugees, only one of them, a seventeen-year-old girl who was pregnant and traveling with her husband and her in-laws, spoke a little English. She told the folks in Gander to call her Alice, because she didn’t think they would understand her real name, Olesya Buntylo.

Buntylo is a bright young woman with dark hair and a round face. She is modest but funny, and deeply religious. Her family had been saving money for years to make the move to the United States, and on September 11 they were on their way to join other members of their family already living in Renton, Washington, just outside of Seattle. Olesya and her husband, Valeriy, wanted their little girl to be born in a country where religious freedom was well established and she wouldn’t be persecuted for being Christian. Although it was now considered a free and independent state, Moldova had not shed all of its old hard-line Communist influences when it came to religion.

Inside the Baptist church, volunteers had arranged the pews into five large squares—almost like mini-forts—which would act as the living quarters for each of the families. They also brought blankets and pillows from their homes, clothes for the adults and the children, and lots of diapers for the babies.

Clark Piercey had some sense of how disorienting it must have been for these people. He knew what it was like to be in a country where you didn’t understand the language. He and his wife, Laura, had once been teachers with Canadian Baptist Missionaries and spent six months in Zaire in late 1990. At least they knew in advance what they were getting themselves into and had had time to prepare for it. But he wasn’t sure these refugees from the former Soviet Union fully understood what was going on.

Piercey, an air-traffic controller, spent nearly all of his free time at the church. Early on, he brought an atlas from his home to show people where they were. The first night in the church, Piercey volunteered to spend the night with them in case they needed anything. At about two in the morning, one of the men came downstairs to the kitchen in the church basement where Piercey was sitting. The man wanted something, but Piercey couldn’t figure it out. Finally, as the man used pointing and hand gestures and little baby noises, Piercey realized the man needed milk to feed one of the babies upstairs. He took out a bottle of formula from the refrigerator and popped it into the microwave. The man grew upset until Piercey handed him the bottle and he realized all Piercey had done was warm it up. It appeared the father had never used a microwave before. It was the start of a long process of discovery for the church members and their unexpected guests. And before it would come to an end, both the Moldovans and the Baptists would become experts in the art of pantomime and charades.

I
t was nearly 3
A.M.
when Newfoundland’s long-lost son, Lenny O’Driscoll, disembarked from his plane and set foot on native soil. By the time he and Maria, as well as the other passengers, were processed and bused to the Royal Canadian Legion hall, it was nearing four in the morning. Despite the hour, volunteers were waiting to serve hot soup and fresh sandwiches. The volunteers had been there all night, not sure when their “plane people” would arrive. First they were told to expect them around 6:30 Tuesday evening. Then it was pushed back to ten, and then midnight.

They used the extra time to gather supplies. Beulah Cooper and several of the women from the legion’s ladies auxiliary made sandwiches. Cooper mixed up a batch of egg salad as well as a platter of ham-and-cheese sandwiches. The soup was more a hearty stew than a broth, good to ward off any night chills.

Most passengers, though, simply wanted a blanket, a pillow, and a place to lie down. Except for Lenny. He wasn’t tired or hungry.

“I want a drink,” he declared, slapping his hand down on the legion’s long wooden bar, his accent seeming to return with every breath of cool Newfoundland night air. “I’ve been gone for thirty-five years and I’m back,” he continued. “Now, can I get the bar open?”

The president of the legion, Wally Crummell, didn’t know what to say. He and the other volunteers had tried to anticipate every contingency and need, from toothpaste to sanitary napkins, but no one had counted on the return of the prodigal Newf.

“Boy, oh boy.” Crummell sighed, shaking his head. “We can’t open the bar at this hour in the morning. Not with all the young ones around.”

Lenny looked around at the children, many of whom were asleep in the arms of their fathers and mothers.

“How about a bottle, then?” Lenny asked. “I’ll go sit over there, and anyone who wants to join me for a toast to my return can join me.”

Crummell turned to his bar manager, Alf Johnson. The two men decided it would be best to keep the liquor cabinet closed until everyone settled in. Lenny said he understood. He was just excited about being home.

“I’m from South Shore, on the Avalon,” Lenny offered, describing a corner of Newfoundland just south of the provincial capital. “That’s where all of the O’Driscolls are from.”

Crummell knew exactly where Lenny was talking about. There used to be a time when just knowing a fellow’s last name gave you a better-than-even chance of telling what town his family came from. As Lenny started reminiscing about his younger days and the Newfoundland of old, Crummell couldn’t help but like him.

Lenny was proof positive that no matter how far you travel or how long you stay away, you can take the man out of Newfoundland but you can’t take Newfoundland out of the man. Lenny was more than just a character, Crummell thought, he was what folks in the area like to describe as a “real going concern.” Crummell could only hope he himself would be as spry and filled with life when he was eighty-two.

“Ah, the heck with it,” Crummell privately told Alf Johnson as he pulled him away from Lenny. “As soon as possible, open the bar and give the man a drink.”

A
t the other end of the bar, Hannah O’Rourke waited on line to use the legion’s phone so she could call home to learn if there was any news on her son Kevin, the New York City firefighter. Despite the hour, she called Kevin’s house. His wife, Maryann, answered. The news wasn’t good.

“Kevin’s captain called earlier, Gran,” Maryann began.

She had been calling her mother-in-law Gran or Granny since she gave birth to Hannah’s first grandchild twenty years before. Back then, Hannah and the rest of the family decided the little ones would dub her Granny—as opposed to Grandma or Nana—and soon everyone fell into the habit of calling her that.

“He said Kevin is missing with his company,” Maryann continued, “and they are still hopeful of finding them alive.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” Hannah said firmly. “We’re going to pray everything is all right.”

Hannah handed the phone to her husband, Dennis. Maryann repeated the news and Dennis broke down in tears. He gave the phone back to his wife.

Maryann wanted to cry herself. She loved Hannah and Dennis as if they were her own parents. She first met their son in the marching band at St. Joachim’s Elementary School. Her brother and Kevin were best friends. And since she married Kevin twenty-one years ago, the two families had grown even closer. She knew it was tearing Hannah and Dennis apart to be away from home. The best thing she could do was to be strong for them. She measured her words and the tone of her voice.

“We’re not going to give up hope,” Maryann told Hannah.

“That’s right,” Hannah agreed.

Before hanging up, Hannah once again mistakenly said she was somewhere in Nova Scotia. At a legion hall, she added. She didn’t know the phone number.

George Vitale, Appleton mayor Derm Flynn, and Tom McKeon.
Courtesy of George Vitale

R
oxanne Loper couldn’t sleep. Having all of the families with young children in one room might have seemed like a good idea, but it also meant there wasn’t a moment in the entire night when somebody’s child wasn’t awake and crying. She was naturally restless anyway. She never slept well away from home, and by now she’d been away for more than three weeks. As her husband, Clark, and their newly adopted baby, Alexandria, slept, she found herself wandering the halls of the Lions Club.

Periodically Roxanne would visit the kitchen, where Bruce MacLeod stayed up through the night in case anyone needed anything. Roxanne and MacLeod had hit it off from the start.

“Looks like you’re going to be here a while,” he’d say.

“Maybe we should start looking for a place,” she’d deadpan. “What’s a cabin sell for up here?”

Roxanne had noticed a motorcycle parked out front, and when Bruce told her it belonged to him, she knew they were kindred spirits. She used to own a motorcycle back in Texas.

In the morning, more members of the Lions Club showed up to cook the passengers a huge breakfast. Leading the efforts was Stan Nichol, the Lions Club’s unofficial culinary master, whose regular job was being the lead cook for the Lakeside Senior Home. Nichol and his crew whipped up a batch of eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, coffee, and fried bologna for the passengers. Being from Texas, Roxanne and Clark had never heard of anyone frying bologna before and found it a little disconcerting when they saw their two-year-old, who was normally a finicky eater, gobbling it down as if it was the best thing she’d ever tasted.

After breakfast, a woman Roxanne and Clark had never seen before asked if she could drive them somewhere in town. For instance, did they need anything from the store? Would they like to go to the Wal-Mart? Roxanne and Clark were both eager. None of the passengers had access to their luggage, since it was all still on the planes. And in the case of Roxanne and Clark, they had been wearing the same clothes for almost three days and thought a change was in order. Especially Clark.

After adopting Alexandria in Kazakhstan, they’d had to fly out through Russia. At the airport in Moscow, Alexandria had thrown up all over Clark, and the only shirt he could find in the airport gift shop was black with
WWW.RUSSIA.RU
written across the chest. He didn’t mind the writing, but the shirt was about two sizes too small. When he tried it on at the airport he was embarrassed by how skintight it was, but figured he would be home in a few hours and could make the best of it. A few hours was now looking like a few days, and Clark was growing tired of the strange looks he was getting from the other passengers.

“Are you the plane people?” folks inside the store asked, and then wished them well. Some of the locals offered their condolences for what was happening inside the United States. “We’re so sorry for you,” they’d say mournfully, as if a member of Roxanne and Clark’s family had just died.

Roxanne and Clark decided to buy something comfortable to wear, a change of underwear, and some deodorant. No sooner had they returned to the Lions Club than another woman whom they hadn’t seen before asked if they would like to take a shower. Roxanne hadn’t seen any showering facilities, but assumed they must be tucked away in a part of the club that this woman would now show them.

“No,” the woman said. “You can come over to me house and shower.”

Roxanne stopped herself from laughing. A complete stranger was inviting her to her home to use the shower. Roxanne and Clark had both grown up in small towns, but this went well beyond small-town hospitality. These were the nicest people in the world, Roxanne thought.

The woman lived only a hundred yards from the Lions Club, so Roxanne, Clark, and Alexandria walked over. Both Roxanne and Clark were amazed at how much better they felt after showering and changing into a clean set of clothes. The woman told them to take as much time as they wanted to relax in the living room before heading back to the Lions Club. The house was quiet. It was the first peaceful moment the couple had in days.

R
ose Shepard had lived in Newfoundland for forty-eight years, but when she heard one of the airplanes stranded in Gander was an Aer Lingus jet, the national airline of her beloved Ireland, she knew immediately what she had to do.

“You find out where they are staying,” she told her husband, Doug, “and you go there and bring home some nice Irish people for me to talk to.”

Rose had been born in Donegal County, west of Belfast, in the far northern reaches of Ireland. During World War II she’d gone to England to train as a nurse, and in 1953 arrived in Newfoundland as part of Britain’s overseas nursing service. Three years later she married Doug Shepard, whose family has lived in Newfoundland since the middle of the nineteenth century.

A retired businessman, Doug Shepard was mayor of Gander for sixteen years. Although he hasn’t held that title since 1993, some folks still refer to him as Mr. Mayor. Finding the Aer Lingus passengers was easy enough, and when he arrived at the Royal Canadian Legion, he searched out the group’s president, Wally Crummell.

“I understand you have some Aer Lingus passengers here,” Shepard began, and proceeded to explain his wife’s instructions.

A wry little smile crept across Crummell’s face, as if he had just solved a great riddle. He led Shepard across the room.

“Here’s a nice couple,” he offered. “This is Lenny and Maria O’Driscoll.”

As much as Crummell liked the wily old Newf, he knew it was probably best for everyone if Lenny and his wife had more private accommodations. Shepard introduced himself and asked the O’Driscolls if they would like to stay at his house with his wife while they were in Gander.

“Oh, that’ll be great,” Lenny said without hesitation. “Let’s go.”

G
eorge Vitale laced up his running shoes.

Since arriving in Appleton early Wednesday morning, he had tried to keep himself busy and away from the images on television. Running was one of his best outlets. He had been fortunate in this respect, because rather than checking his luggage at the airport in Ireland, he had packed everything in a single garment bag and carried it aboard the plane. As a result, he was one of the few passengers who actually had access to a change of clothes and personal belongings.

Vitale was thrilled to have had a change of clothes and underwear, but it was his running shoes that lifted his spirits. Running had long been a source of comfort for him, a peaceful time away from the stress of his job as a New York State trooper. Each day before work he would set off from his Brooklyn apartment and jog along the waterway separating that borough from Staten Island. The first half of his run would be south, with his back to Manhattan. He ran under the Verrazano Bridge and then turned and proceeded north, the southern tip of Manhattan on the horizon with the towers acting almost like a beacon. Through the first half of the nineties, when the governor’s office was located at the World Trade Center, he’d finish his run and then dress and go to work in the South Tower, where he oversaw security in the governor’s Manhattan headquarters.

As he started off on his run through the hilly streets of Appleton, he tried to imagine what his jogs would be like when he was home again. He wondered if he would have the strength to run toward a Manhattan skyline missing its towers. Setting a slow and easy pace, he thought about the last two days. On the plane he’d worried most about his best friend from childhood. Anthony DeRubbio, a firefighter in Brooklyn. After initially thinking only about Anthony, Vitale started to wonder about Anthony’s older brother, Dominick, who was a battalion chief in the FDNY. While he was still on the plane, Vitale had learned that many of the missing firefighters were among the department’s command staff. As a battalion chief, Dominick was probably right there with them. Was he missing? Was he alive or dead? When Vitale first arrived in Appleton and was able to talk to his own family, it was one of the first questions he asked.

“How’s Anthony?” Vitale asked his brother, Dennis.

“He’s okay,” Dennis said without much excitement.

Vitale was elated.

“And Dominick?”

“He’s fine,” Dennis said. “But David’s missing.”

David DeRubbio was one of Anthony’s younger brothers. He was a firefighter with Engine 226 in downtown Brooklyn and was part of the first wave of firefighters to reach the towers. He was thirty-eight years old and had come to the fire department late in life, deciding to follow in the path of three of his brothers. The fifth of seven children, he’d been on the job only three years. He had a wife and a twelve-year-old daughter.

Vitale felt guilty for having worried only about Anthony and Dominick, and not really thinking about David. He remembered David DeRubbio as a funny kid and a good dad. Strikingly handsome, with blond hair and blue eyes, David was always telling jokes. And he had the type of laugh that would draw people in. In his mind, Vitale could see David Rollerblading through their Brooklyn neighborhood of Bay Ridge or playing roller hockey with his brother Anthony. And he could remember how excited David had been when he learned he’d been accepted to the firefighter training academy. For David, being a firefighter was the missing piece to his life, and besides his wife and daughter, there was nothing he loved more. Except maybe the New York Rangers. He wore a Rangers insignia on his fire helmet. Vitale laughed as he recalled how it befuddled David that his twelve-year-old daughter, Jessica, was a die-hard Islanders fan.

Following the river, which curved its way through Appleton, Vitale wanted to clear his mind for a few minutes while he ran. He turned up the volume on his Walkman and listened to a tape of the soundtrack from the movie
Meet Joe Black
. The Brad Pitt film was basically forgettable, but its music, scored by composer Thomas Newman, was powerful. The cousin of singer, songwriter, and composer Randy Newman, Thomas Newman had scored such films as
American Beauty
and
The Shawshank Redemption
. His work for
Meet Joe Black
featured haunting, emotional, classically inspired orchestral pieces. They were dark, almost funereal in nature, setting the tone for a movie whose main character was a personification of Death.

Although it just happened to be the tape he brought with him to Ireland, it was a fitting backdrop for the moment. The somber notes filled Vitale’s ears and stood in stark contrast to the beauty around him—the green canopy of trees, the pale blue sky, the perfectly trimmed and painted homes overlooking the river. Alone and seemingly in the middle of nowhere, he felt useless being so far away from home. He should be in New York, he thought, helping, doing his job, doing something constructive like trying to find David and the others. He felt the road beneath his feet and again tried to clear his mind. All he wanted to do was sweat and let his body take over. The harder he ran, the more distance he temporarily placed between himself and his grief.

After several miles he arrived back at the community center. As always, the television was on, showing news reports and old footage. Local volunteers were on hand, too. Since the community center didn’t have shower facilities, Cindy and Reg Wheaton took Vitale to their home just down the street. They told him to help himself to anything in the refrigerator and to use the phone to make calls or the computer to send e-mails. They showed him where the remote for the cable television was located, handed him a clean towel, and left. He could stay as long as he wanted, and they told him that when he was done, he should just leave the door unlocked on the way out. Vitale was speechless when they left. Although the Wheatons thought nothing of leaving a stranger in their home, it was an act of faith Vitale desperately needed at that moment. Something to replace the pain he was feeling. A reassuring sign that the world wasn’t as stark as the music that was still echoing in his head.

G
eneral Barbara Fast—the intelligence chief for the United States military command overseeing Europe, Africa, and parts of the Middle East—awoke early Wednesday morning after spending the night sleeping on the floor of an American Airlines jumbo jet. Fast had given up her seat for the night to allow a pregnant woman from India to stretch out in the row they had been sharing. The forty-seven-year-old Fast didn’t mind sleeping in a cramped, uncomfortable space. After all, she was career military.

She had joined the army in 1976 to take advantage of the GI Bill as a way to pay for graduate school. It didn’t take long, however, for her to see a future in the service. From the outset of her career she was assigned to intelligence units, mostly in Europe. Her undergraduate degree was in German and she was fluent both in that language and in Spanish. She rose steadily through the ranks and was promoted to general in July 2000, while on assignment with the National Security Agency.