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

by Jim DeFede

One song in particular that Newfoundlanders love is an old tune called “There Are No Price Tags on the Doors of Newfoundland.” Raise your glass and drink with me to that island in the sea Where friendship is a word they understand. You will never be alone when you’re in a Newfie’s home, There’s no price tag on the doors in Newfoundland. There will always be a chair at the table for you there, They will share what they have with any man. You don’t have to worry, friend, if your pocketbook is thin, There’s no price tag on the doors in Newfoundland.

Never before in the ninety-eight-year history of American aviation had such a command been given. There were 4,546 civilian aircraft over the United States at the time, from private Cessnas to jumbo jets, and they all scrambled to find a place to land. Closing airspace had its most disorienting effect, though, on approximately four hundred international flights headed toward the United States, the majority of which were coming across the Atlantic from Europe. While some of these planes were able to turn around, the only option for most was to land in Canada. Although officials in the United States were certainly justified in wanting to protect their own borders, they were effectively passing the potential threat posed by these planes onto their neighbor. Canadian officials had no way of knowing if any of these flights contained terrorists. In fact, Canadian and American law enforcement suspected there were terrorists lying in wait on some of these flights. Despite the risk, Canada didn’t hesitate to accept the orphaned planes. More than 250 aircraft, carrying 43,895 people, were diverted to fifteen Canadian airports from Vancouver in the west to St. John’s in the east. American-bound planes were forced to land in Halifax, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg, and Calgary. In each of these cities an army of volunteers and social service agencies came together to help the stranded passengers in any way possible—from offering them a place to stay or a change of clothes to cook...

On Unicom, pilots were alerting one another to be careful. Every plane in the air could be a possible target for hijackers. With each passing minute, the voices of pilots broadcasting over Unicom grew more frantic. Did anyone know which airlines were involved? Was it American? United? Delta? Did anyone hear a flight number? How many other planes were unaccounted for? One? Two? Five? Nine?

Finding the precise altitude of the stream on any given day and easing pilots into it is the art of being a controller in Gander. Gander controllers take pride in making sure pilots and their passengers get from one point on the map to another as smoothly and as comfortably as possible.

Obviously the airports in New York were going to be closed, O’Reilly concluded. But even he was surprised when he received a call from the air-traffic control center in Boston alerting him that all airspace in the United States had been closed. The second piece of news from Boston: all American carriers—United, American, Delta, Continental—had to land at the nearest airport immediately. Foreign carriers had a choice: they could turn around and fly home or land in Canada, but they couldn’t come into the United States. As O’Reilly talked to Federal Aviation Administration officials in Boston, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. September 11 was certainly shaping up to be an unbelievable birthday.

Without being called, off-duty controllers started arriving at the center within a half hour of the attacks. Eventually every controller working a screen had at least one backup and a supervisor to help.

And now, on September 11, for the same reason it was considered a suitable landing site for the Space Shuttle—it has an unusually long main runway—Harold O’Reilly knew it would be the ideal place to handle a sky full of jumbo jets with nowhere to land. The irony of the situation was not lost on O’Reilly. The very same planes that had rendered Gander’s airport largely obsolete were now going to be forced to seek shelter there.

Elliott didn’t want to get caught flat-footed. The town needed to start getting ready in case the passengers were going to be stranded there overnight. The town opened its emergency operations center—a room inside town hall—and started contacting local groups to place them on alert that it might need their assistance.

If the pilot tried to stall, Puddister would make the decision. “You’re instructed to land . . .” And then he’d fill in the blank. The word “instruct” carries a lot of weight in the vernacular of pilots and air-traffic controllers. As a matter of civility, pilots and controllers normally use the word “request.” When a controller uses the word “instruct,” it’s the same as an order. A pilots who refuses to comply can lose his license.

Fellow controller Reg Batson was even more blunt with the pilots. “Anyone trying to enter U.S. airspace,” he warned, “will be shot down.”

A little before 11 A.M. local time, Virgin Air Flight 75, on its way from Manchester, England, to Orlando, Florida, became the first diverted airplane to land in Gander. The plane circled the town, came in low from the northeast, and landed on Runway 22. Aboard were 337 passengers, most on their way to a family vacation in Disney World.

Not since World War II had the airport seen this much activity. Hundreds of people drove out to watch. Their cars clogged the access roads circling the airport as they stopped to take pictures of the different types of planes from so many different airlines. Virgin Air. British Airways. Air Italia. Air France. Sabena. Lufthansa. Aer Lingus. TWA. Delta. Continental. American. US Air. Northwest. Air Hungaria. The list went on and on. There were military planes and a few private jets as well. There were so many planes, in fact, that airport officials had to use Gander’s second runway as a parking lot for some of them. The planes were stacked, nose to tail, one after another.

Not long after the planes started landing, airport officials began receiving desperate pleas for help from many of the captains. A growing number of their passengers were climbing the cabin walls for a cigarette. Mentally these smokers had braced themselves for a six-hour transatlantic flight without any tobacco. But as their time on board the aircraft suddenly became indefinite and their stress levels skyrocketed as they tried to comprehend the severity of the situation that had brought them to Gander, the nicotine “jones” began to grip them something fierce. A few flight crews broke the rules and allowed small groups of passengers to light up near the open door of the plane. Most, however, enforced the no-smoking mandate. On one Continental flight, two passengers needed to be sedated because they developed the shakes so bad.

As the principal, he went on the PA system and instructed all of the students to clean out their desks, since they were going to have to fill up the classrooms with cots. Similar messages were being delivered at the high school, Gander Collegiate, and the elementary school, Gander Academy. All of the churches in town were placed on notice, as well as the fraternal organizations such as the Lions Club, the Knights of Columbus, and the Royal Canadian Legion hall. Without waiting to be asked, the mayors from the smaller surrounding towns started calling in, offering their own facilities for passengers. The Salvation Army not only had churches in several of these towns, but they also had a summer camp, out in the woods, which could hold hundreds of people. The air force base, 9 Gander Wing, was already on alert. All of its airmen and reserves were called in and the officers’ club was quickly converted into a shelter. One place where passengers wouldn’t stay was in any of the town’s 550 hotel rooms. Soon after the planes landed, Geoff Tucker realized he needed to make sure the flight crews had a decent place to stay. Pilots and flight attendants are required to have a certain amount of rest or they are not allowed to fly. Tucker estimated there to be 500 pilots, copilots, flight engineers, pursers, and flight attendants aboard the planes. Tucker called town manager Jake Turner. “We’re going to need every hotel room in town,” the airport vice-president told him. “You are going t...

He wanted to move the passengers through the airport as fast as possible so that those on the next plane could be taken off. He made sure all of the television sets in the airport were either hidden or unplugged. He knew the passengers hadn’t seen any of the images of the attack and was afraid they would emotionally break down in the terminal. To keep them moving, Out of Order signs were posted on all of the pay phones in the airport. The phones actually worked, but officials were afraid people would stop and wait in line to call their homes. The biggest problem facing officials was transportation. How do you move almost 7,000 people to shelters, some of which were almost fifty miles outside of town? The logical answer was to use school buses. On September 11, however, Gander was in the midst of a nasty strike by the area’s school-bus drivers. Amazingly, as soon as the drivers realized what was happening, they laid down their picket signs, setting their own interests aside, and volunteered en masse to work around the clock carrying the passengers wherever they needed to go.

None of them had ever been through a day like this. They were all so relieved it was over that none of them wanted to be alone. The closest thing Puddister could liken it to was driving on icy roads through a blinding snowstorm; both hands on the steering wheel, knuckles white, and hypersensitive to everything, you don’t realize how scared you are until you pull into the driveway.

As other passengers used the phone, word began spreading through the plane about what was happening in the United States. Have you heard? Seven planes hijacked! The towers of the Trade Center have collapsed! The Pentagon and the White House have been hit! More than 10,000 people are dead! The president has gone into a hidden nuclear bunker! Some of the stories were true and many others were false. They all seemed unbelievable.

At 4:30 P.M., the passengers aboard Virgin Air Flight 75, the first plane to land in Gander, made their way off the plane and into the terminal. It took almost three hours for the 337 passengers to go through the various checkpoints and board buses for the shelter. At that rate it would take almost three days to get all of the passengers off the planes. Des Dillon wasn’t worried, however. He knew the first plane would take some time while each of the agencies perfected the way they did things and added more staff. Before long, they would be able to process a plane every forty-five minutes. For now, though, it was a slow and arduous task. Watching the passengers as they moved through the terminal, Dillon was amazed by their demeanor. No one was cranky or complaining. They all seemed in good spirits. Without any TVs or telephones to distract the passengers, there weren’t any unnecessary delays. Except for one. A volunteer had taped a large map of the world to the wall and with a crude red marker drew an arrow pointing to Gander. YOU ARE HERE, the volunteer wrote on the map. Exhausted passengers would stop and stare at the map for several minutes, trying to regain their bearings.

The TV set was to Roxanne’s immediate right, mounted on the wall, and pointing away from her, so she couldn’t tell what was on the screen. But she could see the faces of the people watching it. Their expressions made her stop. Mouths slightly agape. Eyes wide. And although nobody was crying outright, a few seemed teary. The stillness chilled her. No one talked. No one whispered. And no one looked away.

Good evening. Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices; secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers; moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed; our country is strong. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve .

Standing in the doorway of the cockpit was McKeon. As the president spoke, he couldn’t help but imagine that this must have been what it was like for his parents and grandparents during World War II. Gathered around a radio, learning about the attack on Pearl Harbor, and then listening to the president, searching for hope and strength in his words.

And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us, spoken through the ages in Psalm 23: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me.” This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day.

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.

Every business in Gander joined the relief effort. The local Kentucky Fried Chicken and Subway sandwich outlets, as well as the local pizza joints, sent carloads of food to the airport on Tuesday and Wednesday to help feed the passengers stranded on the planes. Gander’s food co-op, one of the two supermarkets in town, went to twenty-four-hour service in case any of the shelters needed an item from their shelves. Newtel, the telephone company for Newfoundland, set up a long bank of tables on the sidewalk in front of its offices and filled them with telephones so passengers could make free long-distance phone calls to their families. On another set of outdoor tables, they placed computers with Internet access. Newtel officials kept the tables running day and night for as long as the passengers needed them.

For O’Brien, an event like this was the reason he loved living in Gander. A Newfoundlander all his life, he was proud of the way his community would pull together and help one another—or for that matter, a complete stranger. It was a spirit he wanted his three daughters to know and understand, and it was the reason he would never leave.

Doc Tweedie was stunned when Harris told him what was happening. On Tuesday, he had been forty miles away in Bishop Falls tending to a sick cow when he heard about the terrorist attack in the United States and learned of the diverted flights to Gander. Suspecting there might be animals on some of the planes, he asked his wife to check into it. When she called Gander’s town hall on Tuesday, she was told there were no animals on any of the flights—a message she passed on to her husband. Now he suddenly learned there were animals on those planes. And after hearing the horror stories from Harris, Tweedie leaped into action. After several phone calls to his superiors in St. John’s, a deal was reached whereby the animals could be taken off the plane and kept in a vacant hangar where the women could care for them. “Thank God,” Humby said when she heard the news from Doc Tweedie. She knew if they hadn’t received permission to remove the animals, some of them would have certainly died.

Despite the delay, the 116 people aboard Continental Flight 5 from London to Houston were in amazingly good spirits. This was largely attributable to three factors. First, everyone recognized that in light of the tragic events in the United States, they had no right to complain. Second, they understood that griping wouldn’t do any good anyway, so they might as well make the best of it. And third, the flight attendants had unlocked the liquor carts and were letting everyone pour their own drinks for free.

Deb, Winnie, and Lana made an eclectic trio: an innocent Texas Aggie, a Nigerian princess, and a globe-trotting mom.

It was late Wednesday afternoon, and for the first time they all saw the images of destruction in New York. Until now they had done a good job of distancing themselves from the terror, but as soon as they saw news reports and those pictures, the reality of the last twenty-four hours hit them, hit them in such a way that they could no longer ignore it. Shocked. Shaken. Horrified. There were no words to describe what they were feeling. Deb broke down in tears in the living room. Winnie ran into the bathroom to cry. The others just stood there speechless. For now at least, the party was over.

There were so many different cultures represented in the school, it was just staggering to Smith. Soon after the passengers arrived, school officials hung a large map of the world on the wall and asked everyone to place a thumbtack next to the place they were from. By her count, at Lakewood Academy alone there were people from forty different countries, from Sri Lanka to Tasmania. There were women in burkas and men in flowing robes. The hallways were filled with the sounds of different languages.

In the morning, special arrangements were made to secretly fly Fast to Europe. By Friday, she was back at her command in Stuttgart, where her staff continued to help piece together the circumstances that led up to the attack and hunt for those responsible. Before leaving the Knights of Columbus, she said good-bye to some of the passengers and thanked the volunteers for their kindness. Driving to the air force base, Fast commented to McKeage how wonderful everyone in town had been. It made her feel part of a family. “We’re all Americans tonight,” replied McKeage.

The night before, when she stepped off the plane, Roxanne hadn’t noticed just how many planes were on the ground. Now that they were all empty, they were parked nose to tail, one after another. “Wow,” she said, getting off the motorcycle. “That is amazing. All those planes. So many people.” Roxanne looked away from MacLeod and stared at the stars in the sky. How could somebody do something so evil, something that adversely affected so many innocent lives? How could somebody have so much hatred for America? She could feel the tears on her face. It was all finally catching up to her: the notion that her country was under attack; the magnitude of the suffering of the families of the dead and missing; the ambiguity over how long she and the others would stay in Gander and where they would go next; the lack of sleep; the lack of privacy; the separation from Samantha; the rejection by Alexandria. On the side of the dark and empty road, dwarfed by the jumbo jets all around her, she allowed herself to cry.

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.

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.

Designed and dedicated while Sheppard was mayor, the memorial attracts visitors year-round. For Doug Sheppard, visiting the memorial with the O’Driscolls following September 11 gave it an added meaning. And they were not alone. Hundreds of passengers stranded in Gander asked to be taken to the memorial—which is just outside of town—to see the sculpture and the plaque bearing the names of the dead and the flags now lowered to half-mast.

Canadian Tire donated sleeping bags, air mattresses, blankets, and bottles of water. One of the first things it donated, though, were toys. One of the firefighters in town realized there were a lot of kids among the passengers and wanted to give each of them a small toy to play with when they came off the plane. He contacted O’Donnell and Susanne Gillingham, the store manager, to see if they could help. Logistically, it would have been difficult to hand the toys out at the airport, so they worked out a plan to have the toys delivered to the various shelters. Canadian Tire sells toys only during Christmas, so its stock in Gander was fairly limited in early September. O’Donnell discovered, however, a warehouse full of toys in Grand Falls. When she explained the situation, the fire department lent her a truck and a driver, and off they went. O’Donnell had one rule for the toys: nothing violent. No war toys. No guns. Not now, not with everything that had happened on September 11. Instead, O’Donnell loaded up on dolls and stuffed animals and board games and trucks and race cars. She even managed to find a few handheld computer games. She made sure that every toy that needed batteries had them. They filled up the back of the fire truck and raced home to Gander. The fire truck went from shelter to shelter, handing out toys to kids who would come running to greet them. Each day it made a loop of the shelters to make sure none of the kids was missed. Members of Gander’s volunteer f...

Genetically speaking, no other animal is closer to a human being than a Bonobo monkey. Cousin to the chimpanzee, Bonobos even look more like humans than any other ape. And Bonobos are closer genetically to humans than they are to gorillas.

On the way to her friend’s house, Vey discovered that the Uncles were from Alexandria, Virginia. Vey’s daughter, Kelly, lived in Alexandria. “What a splendid coincidence,” she said. As they continued to talk, the Uncles said their daughter, Peggy, was upset that her parents were marooned in a town she had never heard of before. Vey told the Uncles she had the perfect solution for Peggy’s worries. Vey would have Kelly call Peggy and allay her fears. That night, Kelly Vey went one step better. She met Peggy in person and assured her over dinner that there wasn’t a better place in the world to be trapped in than Gander.

By now word had spread among all of the passengers that the plane was heading for Frankfurt. Some were standing in the aisles, screaming and shouting profanities at the pilot and the crew. Beth was sobbing uncontrollably. Diana was screaming. The pilot was yelling for everyone to settle down or he would have the police board the plane to restore order. Then another voice pierced the crowd. “Nobody wants to go to Dallas more than I do,” the man declared. “My mother is being buried tomorrow. But there is nothing we can do. Now everyone sit down and let’s go.”

The guard assigned to watch them just shook his head and grimaced. This was the first local person they had encountered during their stay in Gander who didn’t smile. Roxanne dubbed him “the meanest Canadian.”

Hashing things out that night, they identified three problems. First, all of the rental cars in town were taken. Second, even if they found a rental car in Canada, they were told they wouldn’t be allowed to take it on a one-way trip into the United States, which meant they would have to drive to the border, return their Canadian rental car on the Canadian side of the line, somehow cross into the United States, and then rent another car for the trip to Texas. Assuming they could work out the first two bugs, they still had a third problem, which they only discovered when they called to find out the ferry schedule in Port aux Basque. After relaying the departure times of the ferry, the operator warned that the service might have to shut down for a few days. And why was that? “Well,” the ferry operator said, “because of the hurricane.”

Officials at the National Hurricane Center in Miami posted storm warnings for Bermuda and grew concerned that Erin might eventually make landfall in the United States. For the next three days, Erin moved along a straight line, pointing like a dagger toward the northeastern states. On the morning of September 11, however, it had suddenly turned away from the United States and, like everything else in the air that dreadful day, appeared to be “diverted” to Newfoundland.

“Your passport and a smile,” he would say when a passenger walked up to his station. If they responded with a confused look, he’d tell them, “You can’t leave Canada without a passport and a smile.”

When the Government took control of the traditional liquor business in the early 20th century, it began selling the rum in an unlabelled bottle. The product might have remained permanently nameless except for the influx of American servicemen to the island during World War II. As the story goes, the commanding officer of the original detachment was having his first taste of Newfoundland hospitality and, imitating the custom of his host, downed his drink in one gulp. The American’s blood-curdling howl, when he regained his breath, brought the sympathetic and curious from miles around rushing to the house to find what was going on. The first to arrive was a garrulous old American sergeant who pounded on the door and demanded, “What the cripes was that ungodly screech?” The taciturn Newfoundlander who had answered the door replied simply, “The Screech? ’Tis the rum, me son.” Thus was born a legend. As word of the incident spread, the soldiers, determined to try this mysterious “Screech” and finding its effects as devastating as the name implies, adopted it as their favorite.

In the days following September 11, hundreds, if not thousands, of stranded passengers went through some variation of the Screeching-In ceremony across the island. Usually it wasn’t as elaborate or as time-consuming as an official ceremony. But in every town, from Stephenville in the west to St. John’s in the east, a Screecher held a rotting cod in his hands and had people line up to kiss it. It was the natives’ good-natured way of sharing a little bit of their past with their guests. Nowhere was that enthusiasm greater than in Gambo at the Trailways Pub. By some estimates, more than 150 of the 900 passengers were Screeched-In over a two-day period.

The Beatles, a Nigerian princess, and a ripe old cod. Ay, this would indeed be a night they would long remember.

They drove to Kevin’s home in Hewlett, Long Island, and as the car pulled into the driveway, everyone inside the house came spilling out, including Kevin’s wife, Maryann. Everyone was crying and hugging and holding on to each other. After the horrors of the past week, Hannah and Dennis’s return home gave everyone a chance to release some of their bottled-up emotions. Now, whatever happened, they would face it together. And they would get through it as a family.

Brake listened to their pleas. His family, though, didn’t want him speaking out. They wanted him to leave the past alone. Brake wasn’t one to call attention to himself, anyway, he said. “I’m a secretive person,” he explained. But he’d needed to tell someone. And now that he’d told the rabbi, he felt a weight lift off him. After almost two hours, it was time for Brake to get home to his wife. He thanked the rabbi and Hecht for listening, picked up his cane with the tiny Star of David, and slowly shuffled out the door. And with his departure, Rabbi Sudak stopped wondering why he had he been brought to Newfoundland.

The second reason the border was significant was Alexandria. As soon as their adopted baby girl set foot in the United States, her legal status as an American was secure and she would be instantly designated a lawful permanent resident and a United States citizen. As the line of cars moved slowly toward the checkpoint, Clark decided to walk Alexandria across the bridge and into the United States. Wanting to capture the symbolic moment, he yelled for Roxanne to grab their camcorder. Halfway over the St. Croix River he found a line marking the border. Clark set Alexandria down so one of her feet was on the Canadian side of the line and the other was on the American side. He told Alexandria to wave to Roxanne. “Alex becomes a citizen the hard way,” Roxanne declared. “You had to walk and take boats and fly and drive and your country was attacked.”

One hundred and twenty-six hours passed between the time the first plane landed in Gander on Tuesday and the last plane departed on Sunday. It would take several more days for the town to recover physically—the shelters cleaned, the schools reopened, the stores restocked—but much longer for the people to absorb the magnitude of what had happened. In the past, it had always been easy for the citizens of Gander to drown out events in other parts of the world because they always seemed so far removed. Gander, after all, was a safe place to live. A community that prided itself on unlocked doors and friendly neighbors. Now they’d seen how a tragedy more than a thousand miles away could touch their lives directly. Not only had the world come to town, but so, too, did the world’s problems.