The Day The World Came To Town

by Jim Defede

  During her treatments, she applied for a wish through the foundation and was granted one. Her first request was to meet singer Mariah Carey. She was a huge fan of the pop diva. The biggest. Unfortunately, her timing wasn’t very good and her request coincided with the time when Mariah was suffering a nervous breakdown.

  The foundation told Cox to make another request. A friend had once told her how beautiful Italy was, so she thought a trip to the country with her mother and older sister was good idea. There would at least be lots of shopping. They went to Venice and Florence and the Isle of Capri near Naples, and then on to Rome.

  Oh my God, we’re at war, Cox thought to herself on the plane in Gander.

  Her mother, Betty Schmidt, had another thought. What if terrorists were planning on taking over this plane when it reached the United States? There could be frustrated terrorists on the plane right now. She didn’t say anything to her daughters, but as she walked down the aisle to stretch her legs, she couldn’t help but study her fellow passengers. What does a terrorist look like? She didn’t know how to answer that question.

  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.

  After more than seven hours on the ground, the passengers aboard Lufthansa Flight 438 were allowed to get off the plane. It was about 8:30 P.M. local time when a portable staircase was pushed against the plane and everyone filed off. Since they had been one of the first planes on the ground, they were close enough to the terminal to walk the fifty or so yards to the entrance.

  The sweet smell of the night air was the first thing Roxanne Loper noticed. The doors on the plane had been kept closed while they were on the ground and the air inside had grown stale. On her way off the plane, Roxanne grabbed a couple of blankets and some pillows out of first class. She assumed the passengers would have to camp out somewhere inside the airport until their flight was ready to leave. They might even have to sleep there.

  Once they cleared security and customs, passengers were told to walk down a corridor to the main terminal. The airport seemed eerily empty and quiet and she had no idea where she was going. As she reached the end of the corridor, Roxanne started to hear the sound of people ahead. Turning the corner, she was greeted by a phalanx of strangers waving her toward tables manned by folks in red-and-white vests and windbreakers.

  “Oh my God, it’s the Red Cross,” she said.

  The sight of dozens of Red Cross volunteers was jarring. The relief agency helps earthquake survivors, she thought to herself, people who lose their home in hurricanes and tornadoes and floods. It’s for victims of tragedy. That wasn’t her. Was it? She wondered if this meant she and her family were somehow viewed as “victims” of the terrorist attacks. She didn’t like thinking of herself as a victim.

  One thing was certain. If the Red Cross had been mobilized, then this wasn’t going to be a delay of only a few hours. They were going to be here a while. Several volunteers immediately approached Roxanne and Clark and asked if they needed anything special for Alexandria.

  “Diapers,” Roxanne said.

  “What size?” one of the volunteers asked before rushing off.

  The couple were handed bags containing a sandwich, a slice of pizza, and bottled water and ushered to a table, where they were asked their name and phone number. Roxanne still had no idea what was going to happen to them. Smiling people just kept directing them from one point to the next until finally she found herself standing outside the airport.

  “Please, get on the bus,” a man said, motioning to one of the yellow school buses in the parking lot. “Everyone, please get on the bus.”

  There was an entire fleet of yellow school buses waiting for passengers. Once one was filled, the next one pulled up. It wasn’t until they were boarding the bus that Roxanne and Clark learned that the passengers from her flight were being evacuated to the Lions Club. Once everyone from her flight was aboard buses, the caravan moved out. Driving down the dark road from the airport into Gander, Roxanne stared out the window, trying to get her bearings. Along the main road through town, she spotted a number of familiar landmarks that made her feel welcome. McDonald’s. Kentucky Fried Chicken. And perhaps most reassuring of all, a giant Wal-Mart.

  The Gander Lions Club has forty-seven members and a building it shares with the local senior citizens’ group. It has its own bar for special events and a complete kitchen with a double-size commercial stove, large griddle, and twin ovens.

  Pulling up to the Lions Club, the buses were greeted by a dozen people all waving and smiling and calling out, “How she goin’, buddy?” Roxanne and Clark soon learned that when Newfies don’t know a person’s name, they just call that person “buddy.”

  Inside the Lions Club, most passengers spilled into the hall’s main room. Bruce MacLeod intercepted Roxanne and Clark as they walked in. A tall gregarious fellow with graying hair and a broad smile, MacLeod was the vice-president of the club. At 8 A.M. he had finished his shift monitoring radar at the air-traffic control center and was getting ready to go to sleep when he learned about the attack in the United States and the diverted flights. He called in to the ATC to see if he was needed, but they already had enough volunteers. Instead, along with most of the other members of the club, he worked all afternoon readying the place for passengers.

  “We need to put you in a separate room since you have a child,” MacLeod told Roxanne and Clark. He showed them to smaller room where a half-dozen families with children would stay. Beth and Billy Wakefield—the other couple who’d adopted a baby in Kazakhstan—were already inside with Diana. There were air mattresses and sleeping bags piled high in the room, and before long nearly every inch of the floor would be covered by them.

  Roxanne and Clark lay down on one mattress, with Alexandria between them. The child fell asleep almost immediately. While Clark stayed on the air mattress with Alexandria, Roxanne decided to clean up and explore the Lions Club. In the bathroom she found a bucket filled with packages of new toothbrushes. In another bucket, she found every imaginable brand of toothpaste. Also inside the bathroom was a mountain of neatly folded towels. There were hand towels and bath towels in a variety of colors and patterns, which made Roxanne realize every member of the club must have emptied his home closet to meet the need.

  After washing up, she walked into the hall’s main room, which was surprisingly quiet, except for the sound coming from the television. 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. Some people had their arms folded, like they were trying to hold themselves for comfort. Others held their heads in their hands.

  Instantly Roxanne realized the scenes fro
m New York were worse than she imagined. Perhaps even worse than she was capable of imagining. She thought about turning around and walking out of the room. Did she really need to see this tonight? Besides, maybe people were reacting as they were because they were tired. Maybe the images wouldn’t seem so bad after a good night’s rest. But how could she possibly sleep now? She decided it was better to get it over with.

  Slowly, almost tiptoeing, she continued into the room, casting a small arc to the back of the crowd. Looking up, she saw the live reports from the rubble of the towers. At that moment she, too, became transfixed, mouth slightly agape, eyes wide and watery.

  Roxanne had never been to New York, but she’d always wanted to go. Now, she thought, so much of it will never be the same again. It wasn’t long before she saw a replay of the planes—big commercial airliners like the one she’d boarded that morning—crashing into the buildings, creating orange fireballs. Finally she watched as each tower caved in on itself.

  She watched for almost an hour. Numbed by the repetition. Although standing in a crowd, she didn’t want to be alone anymore. She went back to the family room and sat down on the mattress next to Clark.

  “It’s bad,” she said. “You should go see.”

  Clark stood and walked into the main room. Shock quickly gave way to anger as he watched CNN. Why would someone do this? Who would want to kill so many innocent people? The more he watched, the angrier he became until finally he knew he shouldn’t watch any longer. In the family room one of the babies was crying. He crawled into bed alongside Alexandria and Roxanne and closed his eyes. He wanted to go to sleep. He wanted this day to be over.

  Finally some good news. After several hours, New York State trooper George Vitale received word that his sister was alive. At first he didn’t quite believe it. He wondered if the trooper in Albany who passed along the information had somehow made a mistake and confused Patty with Vitale’s other sister.

  “Are you sure it was Patty you spoke to?” Vitale asked the trooper.

  “Yes,” the trooper insisted. Through an odd twist of fate, Patty was shopping in one of the stores under the World Trade Center when the first plane hit, and she immediately left the area. Vitale was relieved. He also felt a bit silly for all the plans he was mentally making to raise his nephew under the assumption that Patty might be dead.

  As time passed, Vitale continued to receive only snippets of information. Officials at the airport weren’t providing any updates, nor were the air-traffic controllers. The pilot even told Vitale the plane’s radio was useless. They needed to be in the air for the captain to call back to Continental’s home base in Houston to find out what was happening. And he assumed that any attempts to pick up a commercial radio station while they were sitting on the tarmac would be futile.

  Most of the information passengers had gathered came from the brief telephone calls they were making to family members. Rumors began circulating that both towers had collapsed. Vitale didn’t think this was possible. Then he finally discovered it was true. Worse still, there were scores of firefighters and police officers in the buildings at the time.

  Vitale had a new worry. His best friend through high school, Anthony DeRubbio, was a New York City firefighter. For that matter, virtually the entire DeRubbio family was made up of firefighters. Three of Anthony’s brothers—Dominick, Robert, and David—were in the FDNY. Vitale’s thoughts were with Anthony. They were the same age and had gone to the same schools—St. Agatha’s Elementary in Brooklyn and Aviation High School in Queens. The reason Vitale went to Aviation was that it was where Anthony wanted to go. Their birthdays were just six days apart. Vitale was born on September 19. Anthony’s birthday was September 25. When they were kids, Vitale would never let Anthony forget that he was older. Could Anthony really be gone?

  During the flight, Tom McKeon was sitting in the row just ahead of Vitale, and the two men started talking soon after landing. When Vitale told McKeon he was positive the towers had collapsed, McKeon was just as certain Vitale must be mistaken.

  Vitale lent McKeon his phone so he could call his father. McKeon’s father was a firefighter for thirty-five years in West New York, a town just across the Hudson River in New Jersey. There wasn’t a place in town from which you couldn’t see the towers.

  “Are the towers really gone?” McKeon asked his father.

  “They’re all gone,” he said.

  “And the firefighters?”

  “Yeah,” his father said mournfully.

  Hearing it from his father was the first time McKeon believed the unimaginable had happened.

  Moving around the plane, Vitale had an idea. He was a talk-radio junkie who loved listening to the stations in the city. The pilot was probably right; parked on the ground, they couldn’t pick up most commercial radio stations, but Vitale knew 770 AM, WABC, had a particularly strong signal and at night could be heard as far away as Maine.

  Maybe tonight they’d be able to pick it up in Newfoundland.

  The pilot, Tom Carroll, was willing to try and gingerly played with the dials on the receiver. The copilot was seated next to him and several flight attendants were also in the cockpit, as was Vitale. Carroll could feel their eyes staring at him as he tried to locate the right frequency. At first all he could find was static, but when he struck upon the New York station, a small cheer erupted in the cockpit. Before the celebration went too far, they were floored by the words spilling out of the speakers. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, were thought to be dead. For hours they remained glued to the radio.

  At 10 P.M. in Gander, Vitale, the pilot, and the crew huddled in the dimly lit cockpit and listened to the president’s address to the nation.

  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…

  Listening to the president’s speech, Vitale was in a state of shock. How could this be happening? he thought to himself. How could somebody do this? Staring out the pilot’s window, he looked across a darkened airfield, which only added to his sense of isolation. He felt overwhelmed. Tears welled up in his eyes.

  America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.

  Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature. And we responded with the best of America—with the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring for strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and help in any way they could…

  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.

  The search is under way for those who are behind these evil acts. I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them…

  Tonight, I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve, for the children whose worlds have been
shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. 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. Yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.

  Thank you. Good night, and God bless America.

  The cockpit fell silent when the president concluded. Vitale’s face was flushed and he could feel the tears on his cheeks. He was embarrassed by his reaction and quickly composed himself before anyone could notice. As a police officer, he worried that people would be looking to him to show strength and he didn’t want to show any sign of weakness. Wiping away the tears, he was filled with another emotion. Pride. At that moment he had never been more proud to be an American.

  Ten hours after landing, the 372 passengers and crew members of Lufthansa Flight 400 were allowed to leave the aircraft. While everyone else boarded buses that would take them to the terminal for processing, Captain Reinhard Knoth stayed behind. The RCMP and Canadian military were running the names of all passengers from each of the planes through various intelligence databases and Knoth was told the name of one of his passengers matched up with the name of a suspected terrorist.