From Karen’s Mother

For those of you looking for a little light in this dark hour, may I suggest a book my book club is discussing this month, “The Day the World Came to Town” by Jim DeFede. It is not new, twenty years old in fact, but just as relevant as it was on the day it was published, maybe more so. It is a reminder of what we can be when we embrace with grace and goodwill our shared humanity.

Compiled from interviews, this slim paperback describes the events in Newfoundland that followed the detouring of 38 international flights to the Gander airport on 9/11/01. Into a town of 10,000, planes arrived with a total of 6,595 passengers and crew. Among them were people from Moldova, Africa, Germany, two adopted babies from Kazakhstan, a New York couple worried about their firefighter son.

The outpouring of goodwill from the native Newfoundlanders was boundless. People, individually and through their organizations, offered shelter, clothes, showers, medicines, toys for kids, and hot meals to weary passengers. Luggage had to be left on board planes and no one was allowed off until security measures had been taken. It was hours before most of them knew what had happened in New York, Pennsylvania and D.C.

Even before passengers had disembarked, the townspeople had organized the logistics for shelter and food without skipping a beat. They were not only generous, they were smart and thorough in their planning and gathering of resources. “For the better part of a week, nearly every man, woman, and child in Gander and the surrounding smaller towns… stopped what they were doing so they could help. They placed their lives on hold for a group of strangers and asked for nothing in return.” writes DeFede in his introduction.

I had to smile when I got to page 64 and read “The Gander Lions Club has forty-seven members and a building it shares with the local senior citizens’ group…Pulling up to the Lions Club, the buses were greeted by a dozen people all waving and smiling and calling out, “How she going’, buddy?” The stranded passengers in those buses were given a place to sleep, food to eat, and their first look at a TV and the news from the States. Here was another group of Lions like our own in Killingworth, in another country, following the same motto, “We serve!”

The information on the history of Newfoundland, its people, and that of Gander airport, though brief, is interesting and relevant to the events of the week. But it is the authenticity and generosity of its people that will not soon leave you. Perhaps one of their favorite songs says it best:

Raise your glass and drink with me to that island in the sea

Where friendship is a word they understand.

You will never be alone when

you’re in a Newfie’s home,

There’s no price tag on the doors in Newfoundland.

There will always be a chair at the table for you there,

They will share what they have with any man.

You don’t have to worry friend if your pocket is thin,

There’s no price tag on the doors in Newfoundland.

And for five days in September of 2001 they proved it. (A popular Broadway musical, “Come from Away” is about the same events.)