The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland (7 page)

Reg Batson finished his shift at the ATC and went to the town’s Masonic temple. A longtime Mason, he helped prepare for the arrival of ninety-one passengers from TWA Flight 819 out of Paris and offered his home to any passenger needing a shower.

By the end of the day, Harold O’Reilly wasn’t sure what to do about his fiftieth birthday. He didn’t feel much like going out. But at the same time, turning fifty was a big deal. As he drove home, he was preparing himself for some sort of celebration, maybe a banner across the front door saying
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
from his family. He knew his wife had been busy all day volunteering around town, but still, he thought, she might try to surprise him by inviting some of their friends over for a drink and a piece of birthday cake. When he arrived home the house was quiet. No banner. No friends. No cake. In all the commotion of the day, everyone, including his wife, had forgotten it was Harold’s birthday.

Setting up at the Lions Club.
Courtesy of the Lions Club

R
oxanne Loper felt like a woman without a time zone. Her body was on Moscow time. Her watch was on Dallas time. And her fears were working overtime. She knew when they had left Russia, and she knew when they were due into Dallas, but she couldn’t quite figure out what time it was in Gander. All she knew for sure was that she had been on this plane for what seemed like an eternity.

Two hours after being diverted to Newfoundland, she still didn’t know why airspace over the United States had been closed. The pilot had offered no additional information and none of the phones on the plane worked, not even individuals’ cell phones. Roxanne’s immediate concern was getting in touch with her family. She wanted them to know that she and Clark and Alexandria were safe.

Flight attendants told passengers to conserve food and water since they didn’t know how long they would be on the ground. By midafternoon, one of the sky phones on the plane was suddenly working. Since Roxanne was sitting closest to the phone, she made the first call. She tried her parents’ house. No answer. Her in-laws’ house. No answer. Her brother’s house. Again, no answer. She left messages on their answering machines.

“We’re in Canada,” she said, being careful not to let her voice intimate just how scared she was. “We don’t know when we are going to get out of here. Don’t worry, we’re all okay.”

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.

A few rows away from Roxanne and Clark, Lisa Cox was hearing the same wild stories. The eighteen-year-old was flying home with her mother and sister after spending eleven days in Italy, courtesy of the Children’s Wish Foundation. When she was sixteen years old, Cox’s doctors discovered a tumor growing inside her and determined she had ovarian cancer. Since then she’d undergone surgery to remove her ovaries and chemotherapy.

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.

A
t 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.

A
fter 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.

T
he 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 from 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.

F
inally 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.