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

by Jim DeFede

The funeral was held on September 28 at St. Joachim’s Church on Long Island. It was one of eight funerals and memorial Masses held for firefighters that day. The mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, attended Kevin’s funeral, as did hundreds of firefighters. There was even a Canadian Mountie, who came to pay his respects on behalf of the people of Canada.

A memorial Mass was held for firefighter David DeRubbio on November 10, 2001 at St. Agatha’s Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn. His body was never recovered.

Cleaning up after the passengers had left, a teacher at Lakewood Academy in Glenwood discovered something amazing on the blackboard of the sixth-grade classroom. Using various colored chalks and crayons, someone had drawn a picture depicting a human body in flight. It was at least three feet by four feet and at the bottom of the blackboard it was signed, MANY THANKS, CLEMENS. Clemens was a passenger, Clemens Briels, and when teachers at the school did a little further checking, they learned that he was a renowned Dutch artist. In fact, Briels was one of the official artists for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The drawing he crafted on the school blackboard was a version of his piece A Jump for Joy, one of the paintings he created especially for the Olympic Games and which was on display in Salt Lake City. The principal had the blackboard removed from the wall, framed, and covered with Plexiglas. It now hangs in the school’s library.

One rumor that did turn out to be true: the wife and children of actor Woody Harrelson were stranded in Gander on their way home from a vacation in Europe. The star of The People vs. Larry Flynt, Natural Born Killers, and Kingpin wasn’t with his family, but was able to talk to them by phone. The Harrelson family spent their time quietly in Gander and then went home with everyone else when their flight was cleared to leave.

By a cruel coincidence, while Marisa was flying from Paris to New York on September 11, her sister was on one of the planes taken over by the hijackers. Berry Berenson, a well-known photographer and the widow of actor Anthony Perkins, was aboard American Airlines Flight 11, en route from Boston to Los Angeles, when it crashed into the North Tower of the Trade Center.

Today, the group has its own Web site—www.deltaflight15.org—and the money collected is being overseen by a well-respected charitable foundation in the United States. The fund, known officially as the Gander Flight 15 Scholarship Fund, was preparing to announce its first scholarship recipient in Lewisporte as this book was going to press during the summer of 2002.

“It was magic,” said passenger Tom McKeon. “And what I now realize is that magic is not guaranteed to happen again. The things that happened on September 12, I took for granted. Seeing the world today, I don’t take it for granted anymore.”

After trying unsuccessfully for years to have a child of their own, the couple was stunned to discover Roxanne was pregnant. Excitement and dread filled her. They had been through this cycle before, having suffered several miscarriages early in their marriage. That was the reason they had stopped trying to have a child and decided to adopt instead. This time would be different. In 2003, she gave birth to Malachi. “We like names from the Bible,” she said. Alexandria and Samantha would have that younger brother—but it didn’t end there. In 2006, Roxanne gave birth to Eli. Macy followed in 2008. After years of heartache and struggle to start a family, Roxanne found herself with a house full of kids. “It’s a lot sometimes, but I love it,” she told me.

As he reflects on those days in Gander, and the feeling across the United States immediately following 9/11, Vitale wonders where that spirit has gone. “I remember coming back and how everybody was so united and how today we’re so divided,” he said. “And I ask myself: Can we have some of that unity without the pain that caused the unity? I don’t think that’s too much to ask. But evidently it is. We’ve lost the ability to come together in America. And I’m worried about the future. I don’t know how we move forward in any kind of harmony.”

Ralph spent the rest of his life in their home, full of love and attention. “He was just a joy,” she said. But as he did in Gander, Ralph had a way of getting into trouble. “He ended up in the emergency room probably two or three times in his life,” Linda said, recalling one time when Ralph ate an entire box of Belgian chocolates and needed to have his stomach pumped. “But that’s the kind of dog he was—he was just full of the devil. Adorable with those flying ears but full of the devil. I miss him terribly.” Ralph passed away on October 15, 2014. He was thirteen years old.

others. “In the darkest of circumstances, good things can still happen,” Diane explained. “The world is in turmoil, but don’t shut yourself away.”

Nevertheless, given all those human frailties, what happened in Gander is still remarkable. And perhaps the lesson isn’t that these acts of kindness occurred because Gander is a magical place, but rather that these people came together in a time of crisis regardless of their own personal shortcomings. And if that’s the case, then it offers hope that all of us have that ability within us.