The Day The World Came To Town

by Jim Defede

  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.”

  George 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.

  General 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.

  In June, she was named director of intelligence for the joint United States European Command, which made her one of the country’s key players in the war on terrorism. And yet here she was, trapp
ed on a plane for more than twenty hours. The plane’s phone and her cell phone worked only intermittently, but she’d had enough communication with her staff in Stuttgart to know they were doing everything they could to deal with the crisis and to find a way to get her home.

  From time to time she wandered to the front of the plane, where the door was open, to survey the scene. She was quite familiar with Gander, because the U.S. military often used it as a refueling stop. She also recalled the Arrow Air plane crash of 1985 and the loss of all those young soldiers from the 101st Airborne. From her vantage point on the plane, Fast could see that the airport was surrounded by trees. She could also see an amazing assortment of commercial airliners.

  By midmorning Wednesday, a row of yellow school buses pulled up to her plane and the passengers were allowed off. Striking up a conversation with the bus driver, Fast learned about their strike and how they had all voluntarily come off the picket line when they learned about the diverted flights. Fast was impressed.

  Fast could see that security inside the airport was being handled by both the RCMP and a detachment from the Canadian military base. After going through a metal detector, Fast placed her carry-on luggage on a table in front of a young soldier. Although she wasn’t wearing a uniform, she was carrying her military identification, and when the soldier spotted it and noticed her rank, he adopted a very formal manner. She noticed that while the passengers before her on line seemed to speed right through, he was taking an exceptionally long time with her. She surmised that the young man, out of a sense of pride, was showing her that he would be thorough and deliberate in accomplishing his task. When he was done, Fast nodded her approval.

  There were 154 passengers aboard American Airlines Flight 49, and once they had made their way through the airport, they were taken to the Knights of Columbus hall in the center of town. Even though Fast was off the plane, there was still little she could do but wait. After showering nearby at the community center, she decided to see if she could accomplish a few of the chores her husband had given her to do while she was in the United States. (She called it her “honey-do list.” As in: “Honey, do this for me” and “Honey, do that for me.”) Although it didn’t look like she would make it to the States, she thought she might find a few of the items in Gander.

  Most of the items were things her husband had trouble finding in Germany. The big item: a Sears catalog featuring Craftsman tools. As luck would have it, there was a small Sears outlet store—not a full-blown Sears—on the outskirts of town. Fast got directions and set off on foot. She could easily have found a ride with someone if she’d wanted to, but she liked the idea of walking after being confined to a plane for so long.

  The walk also gave her more time to think. Earlier, when she arrived at the Knights of Columbus, she saw for the first time, on TV, what had happened. She thought back over all of the bits of intelligence information her command had assembled over the last few months. Was there something they had missed, something they should have seen or detected that would have allowed them to prevent this attack? There were some indications that bin Laden’s network had been more active in recent months, Fast thought, but nothing that would have suggested such a brazen assault on the United States.

  She refused to allow any doubts to gnaw at her or cause her to feel a sense of guilt. She believed the men and women in her command had done the best they could with the information they had.

  Fast found herself on a residential street, where she spotted a man on a porch waving at her. He asked if she was one of the stranded passengers.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He explained that he and his family were preparing a big birthday party for his grandson in the backyard. He asked if she’d like to join them. She agreed and followed him around the house. The boy’s parents were still decorating the backyard with balloons and streamers in anticipation of other children arriving. Fast was introduced to the guest of honor.

  “Happy birthday,” she said.

  “Thank you,” the boy replied.

  “How old are you?”

  “Seven,” he answered.

  Fast was energized by the family’s sense of warmth and their willingness to share this time with an outsider who just happened to be walking down the street. For a moment she could almost forget what a dangerous place the world was and the horrors of the preceding day. But she didn’t stay long. She didn’t need to. A little of that warmth went a long way. Besides, she still wanted to make it to the Sears store before it closed.

  While the one-star general explored the town, another passenger from American Airlines Flight 49, Lisa Zale, surveyed the Knights of Columbus building and had her own epiphany. After spending a night on the plane, the thirty-eight-year-old Zale was anxious for a little space. Rather than sleeping each night indoors, crowded together as they had been on the plane, why not camp out on the front lawn? Zale was traveling with her business partner, Sara Wood. They had been to Paris for a trade show and were on their way home to Dallas. “Let’s just sleep out here,” Zale told Wood, pointing to stretch of green grass between the Knights of Columbus building and the sidewalk.

  Wood initially thought Lisa was crazy. Who sleeps on the street when they can be indoors on a cot? Besides, unlike Zale, the forty-five-year-old Wood had never been camping. Zale told her to have a little faith. Following the main road, the two women walked about a half mile to the Wal-Mart. They bought a lantern and a few other items, but the store was out of air mattresses and sleeping bags. So the ladies moved on to Canadian Tire. As its old slogan implies, Canadian Tire is more than just tires. One of the clerks was able to scrounge up a pair of air mattresses and two sleeping bags and then asked, “Do you want a tent as well?”

  Zale said it wasn’t necessary, but Wood cut her off.

  “Hell, yes, we want a tent,” she declared, her Texas accent almost bowling the clerk over. It might rain, Wood reasoned, so a tent could come in handy. Zale and Wood piled their supplies onto the checkout counter and started reaching for their credit cards.

  “You’re off the plane, right?” the cashier asked.

  When Zale and Wood nodded, the cashier announced that they could just take the items. Anything the stranded passengers needed, the store was happy to provide. The store even offered to send one of their employees over to the Knights of Columbus to help them set up the tent. The two women were awed by how generous everyone in the store had been.

  Zale and Wood loaded their gear into a shopping cart they had taken from Wal-Mart and pushed it back the half mile to the lodge.

  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.

  Rogers Communications, which provides cable-television service to Gander and the surrounding area, made sure every shelter had cable television so the passengers could watch CNN and the other round-the-clock news stations. By the time the first busload of passengers was heading for town, technicians for Rogers were already running temporary cable lines into the local churches where they would be staying. Rogers also operates the public-access television station in Gander, Channel 9. The station became a giant bulletin board where messages were posted to help organize relief efforts. The town’s radio station also broadcast dispatches. An urgent plea for toilet paper at St. Paul’s brought people running to the school with rol
ls of tissue from their own homes.

  After handling the initial nicotine crisis caused by the smoking ban aboard the plane, Kevin O’Brien, owner of MediPlus Pharmacy, rallied the other pharmacists in the area to face an even more daunting challenge. Many of the passengers had packed their prescription medication away in their luggage before leaving Europe. Since all of their bags were still on the plane, they were desperate to have those prescriptions replaced while they were stranded.

  In most cases, the passengers didn’t have their actual prescriptions with them. In each case, O’Brien and the other pharmacists had to call the hometown doctor or pharmacist so they would know the exact medication and dosage, and had a new prescription sent. During one stretch, O’Brien and his wife, Rhonda, worked forty-two hours straight, making calls to a dozen different countries.

  Surprisingly, there isn’t one universal standard for identifying drugs. A drug such as Atenol, commonly prescribed to patients with high blood pressure, can go by different names in different countries. A pharmacist for more than twenty years, O’Brien spent hours on the Internet, and worked with the local hospital and Canadian health officials, to sort through the maze of prescriptions and find the right drugs for each passenger. In the first twenty-four hours, pharmacists in Gander filled more than a thousand prescriptions. All at no cost to the passengers.

  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.

  Patricia O’Keefe spent most of the morning trying to find the phone number for the American Legion hall in Nova Scotia. That was all the information she had on the whereabouts of her parents, Hannah and Dennis O’Rourke. Apart from having the wrong Canadian province, she was also obviously asking for the wrong country’s legion hall. Later everyone in the family would laugh about it. For now it drove them crazy. Somewhere out there, Hannah and Dennis were stranded with no way of getting home, and their son Kevin was trapped inside one of the fallen towers of the World Trade Center.