The Day The World Came To Town

by Jim Defede

  Inside the terminal, the man would be quietly pulled aside and detained for questioning by the police. In the meantime, RCMP officials were concerned that the passenger might have hidden something, possibly a bomb, on board the jumbo jet. Knoth believed the police were being a bit overzealous. If a passenger had taken a bomb onto the plane, he would have blown it up by now. Why wait?

  The strain of the day’s events was evident on the faces of the police surrounding the plane. None of them knew what to expect from one minute to the next. Knoth realized that the moment the first plane hit the first tower, the old rules on combating global terrorism had ceased to apply, but nobody was sure what the new rules would be.

  Walking through the empty aircraft, Knoth accompanied a small squad of officers looking for anything suspicious. After going through the area where the man was sitting, they spread throughout the rest of the plane. Excitedly, one of the officers called out that he’d found something in one of the overhead compartments. It was an oddly shaped cylindrical metal container. Knoth walked over and stared at it for a moment.

  Moving quickly to call in the bomb squad, the officers backed away from the shiny metal object and told Knoth to do the same. Instead, he stepped forward. Reaching into the overhead bin, Knoth heard the officers yelling at him to stop, but he picked up the item anyway. He knew he’d recognized it from somewhere.

  It was a container of Danzka vodka. A premium vodka made in Denmark and packaged in an aluminum bottle. They sell it at the duty-free shop in Frankfurt. The company’s slogan: “Danzka, the Unexpected Vodka.”

  The passengers of Lufthansa Flight 400 were taken to the local high school, Gander Collegiate. Although they arrived at midnight, Frankfurt mayor Petra Roth and Hugo Boss chairman Werner Baldessarini couldn’t believe how many people were waiting to greet the passengers. The volunteers handed out toiletries and bedding and made sure everyone knew there was food and water available.

  Although her English is only fair, Mayor Roth introduced herself to various people at the school and thanked them for everything they were doing.

  The school was still waiting for a supply of cots to arrive. Baldessarini was so tired he decided to make do with what they already had. He took a blanket and a pillow and staked out a small corner of the school’s gym floor. He curled up in his cashmere suit and quickly fell asleep.

  George Vitale would have loved to be able to sleep. As long as he was on the plane, however, he found sleeping impossible. Vitale was relieved when the pilot, at about 2, A.M., announced it was now their turn to go through Canadian customs.

  The combination of sleep deprivation, stress, and the abundance of security made the passengers a bit skittish as they walked through the terminal.

  “Welcome to Gander,” a woman said to Vitale’s fellow passenger Tom McKeon. “Right this way.”

  McKeon realized his nerves were more than a little frayed when he asked the woman for permission to use the airport’s bathroom and she responded by laughing and telling him, “Of course.”

  Rather than housing the passengers from Continental Flight 23 in Gander, they were sent by bus fifteen miles down the road to Appleton, a beautiful town of seven hundred people on the eastern banks of the Gander River. The first thing McKeon noticed when he walked into the Appleton Community Center was the smell of coffee. He had served six years in the navy, mostly aboard submarines, and there was always something about the smell of a fresh pot of coffee that was reassuring to him. The second thing he noticed was the television. Vitale saw it as well. Even though he knew by now that the towers had been destroyed, he was still paralyzed by the pictures. At first he thought it must have been some sort of computer simulation. As people gathered around, all of them horrified, many crying, he realized it was real footage of the attack. The television remained on all night, flickering like a candle at the far end of the room.

  Thanks to a steady stream of U.S. servicemen and their families, who were stationed in the area, the Baptist church in Gander used to be one of the largest congregations in town. Since the American military presence evaporated in the nineties, however, the church has shriveled into one of the town’s smallest. There are six families, about thirty people, who regularly attend services, and they share the guidance of a full-time pastor with a town that is more than an hour away. While the number of Baptists in Gander may have declined, it hasn’t diminished their sense of community.

  As soon as the first plane landed, Gary House, a church deacon, was on the phone to the town’s command center, offering shelter and care for as many of the stranded passengers as could fit inside the church. A retired schoolteacher, House estimated they could comfortably accommodate between thirty and forty people. Since the Baptists weren’t in a position to handle a large number of passengers, Red Cross officials delivered them a small but challenging group.

  Among the 135 passengers on Delta Flight 141 from Brussels to New York were thirty-eight refugees from Moldova, a part of the former Soviet Union located just east of Romania. The refugees constituted five different families who were being relocated to the United States to start new lives. Three of the women in the group were pregnant. And among the five families there were more than a dozen children—from infants to teenagers.

  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.

  It 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.”

  At 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.

  DAY TWO

  Wednesday

  September 12

  CHAPTER SIX

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

  Courtesy of George Vitale

  Roxanne 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 deodor
ant. 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.

  Rose 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.