Come From Away is a Story of Magnificent Humanity

 

On Sunday we are going to see the play "Come From Away" at the McAllen Performing Arts Center.  I have wanted to see this play since visiting Newfoundland a few years ago.  The following is a column I wrote after spending a day at the Gander, Newfoundland Aviation Museum.  I am proud to say that this was one of three columns that were eventually nominated for the AP Op-ed award for small circulation newspapers.   

Gander Newfoundland Keeps the Faith

I picked up the headset and held one side to my ear.  There was the voice—calm, methodical, every tone measured and precise.  In the Gander Aviation Museum I was listening to recordings of air traffic control. 

 

            “Delta one five heavy, this is YQX approach, squawk zero seven seven niner.”

 

            “United two two three heavy, this is YQX, descend to 5500 and hold for approach.”

 

            “American four six heavy, this is YQX, you are clear to land zero three.”

 

            The term “heavy” refers to a wide body airplane.  Air traffic control handles these by the dozen every day.  You would have thought it was any other day.  But it wasn’t.

 

            This was September 11, 2001, and the voice on that headset was calmly and confidently saving lives.

 

American airspace had been shut down.  Nineteen radical Islamist terrorist had hi-jacked four airplanes.  Two had been flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York.  One had been flown into the Pentagon and another, probably heading for the White House, was brought down by the determined passengers on board who simply decided that they were their own last best hope. 

           

 

What was going to be done with the 500 planes already in the air and en route to America?  Canada, who has had our back more than once, agreed to land the planes that could not return to their point of origin, diverting them away from the largest cities: Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa.   But where do you set down a wide-bodied jet?

 

Fortunately, one of the first airports trans-Atlantic flights come to happens to be more than adequate for the job.  Gander, Newfoundland has a runway built as an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle.  Gander is also the air traffic control headquarters for all trans-Atlantic air traffic.  When US airspace went sterile, Gander had 370 airplanes that it was already monitoring in its two-story bunker.  Don O’Brien and his crew set to work averting, diverting and landing planes throughout Canada. 

 

            Gander landed 37 “heavies” that day.  But that still left the problem of what does a poor community of just 10,000 people do with an unexpected 6,700 visitors?  The answer, evidently, is that you take them to your bosom. 

 

            People who left the planes were taken to shelters in the schools, churches and businesses.  When space ran out, they were taken to people’s homes.  They were handed home-made lunches when they stepped off busses being driven by men who had been on strike, but came back for this service without being asked.  The “plane people,” as they came to be called, walked through buffet lines of home-made food that had been hastily made that morning by the women now serving it up.  Pharmacists came to the shelters asking what people needed.  Medicines were provided, prescriptions filled, and not one Newfoundlander would take a dime for any of it. 

 

            Canada landed lots of planes that day.  Halifax landed more planes than Gander, Vancouver almost as many; people from around the world were treated well in each case.  But Gander is so small, and its heart so big, that it holds a special place in humanities honor roll.  Alan Flood, of Bristol, England, who was stranded with his wife, Barbara, summed up the feelings of hundreds of passengers when he said, “We were strangers. They didn’t know what we were like. They took us to their homes, made sure we wanted for nothing, treated us as part of the family.”


            When you go to Newfoundland, go to Gander, where they keep the faith. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Generation of Serfs

  On October 25, 1415, Henry V of England laid some serious hurt on the French at the Battle of Agincourt at Pas-de-Calais, France.   Part of the success of this campaign was due to Henry’s use of the longbow, but part of it also goes to the creative use of military indentures.   These legal contracts required all the English captains to provide specified amounts of men, material and time to the King’s cause.             An indenture was a document, written in duplicate and then torn along a jagged line, like little teeth ( dents ), in the paper.   One portion of the contract was in possession of each party and when the required conditions and period of service were fulfilled, the parts reunited, and the debt was considered paid.   Many of the people who first came to this country from England came as indentured servants, worked off their debt and became the backbone of the country.             Today we are creating a nation not of indentured servants, someone with a carefully
Read more

Our Beautiful Constitution and its Ugly Opponents

 The Constitution is our anchor of stability in a turbulent world!   We can withstand a bad President and a petulant Congress (for the short term, at least) because our Constitution both guides and limits.   If someone asked me to provide proof of a loving God, I would simply ask them how else so many geniuses in the matter of human governance could have been clustered together in the right time and place to create both our country and the means to govern it.    Our founding fathers had the vision to devise a way to not only govern themselves, but govern a country that they could not imagine, yet believed would prevail. The constitution of the United States is like a good parent.   It has allowed us to grow up as we have grown older, with the result that the United States of America is the oldest living democracy in the world.   The miracle of this document is that it lives, breathes and moves with the times.   The three branches of our government work together while standing alone
Read more

Kennewick Man, Columbus Day and History's Judgement

  Nine thousand years ago a man died along the Columbia River.  About 40 years old, he stood 5 feet 7 inches tall and his 160 pounds were all lean, compact strength.  He was no stranger to injury.  In his life, he had skull injuries, 5 broken ribs and a spear point lodged in his pelvic bones.  In each case, he recovered, which means he had someone to care for him.  At the time of his death, cause unknown, he was buried with dignity.               He is called Kennewick Man.  He came to North America long before the peoples currently called Native Americans arrived.  DNA evidence proves he is not related to them.  If there is a real, “first” American, it is this man, most closely related to two far flung groups: Polynesians and the Ainu of Japan.  If you are a Native American, and think you have an historic right of ownership to North America, look over your shoulder.  Kennewick man not only predates you, but he did not even come via the Berengia land bridge.  He is part of a seafar
Read more