Retired air traffic controller Patrick Woodford stood behind a metal gate and eagerly scanned the arrivals hall of the Gander International Airport.
He noticed how much busier it was this week than usual. Dozens of people were milling around the airport’s one baggage carousel and waiting near its two car rental counters.
Finally, he spotted the passenger he was waiting for and raised an arm. Beverley Bass, a petite woman with a short platinum haircut, strode headlong into his arms. “How’s everything?” he said, squeezing his friend in a tight embrace. “How’s everything?”
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Mr. Woodford was an air-traffic controller on Sept. 11, 2001, when Ms. Bass had to pilot her Boeing 777 to Gander.
The two had first forged a connection 25 years ago, here at the same airport, under horrifying circumstances.
Mr. Woodford was the one who helped guide Ms. Bass, the pilot of an American Airlines flight that had been en route from Paris to Dallas, to land on a Gander runway on Sept. 11, 2001.
That day, hijackers affiliated with the al-Qaeda terrorism network crashed planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and into the Pentagon in Virginia. A fourth plane went down in a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, including 24 Canadians. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in history.
After officials closed U.S. airspace, this tiny airport was the landing spot for 38 passenger planes carrying more than 6,600 travellers and crew – part of an operation that diverted up to 250 flights to airports across Canada. And the town, with its population of less than 10,000 people at the time, became their temporary home.
Thousands have made that airport busy again this week, and returned to that home for a gathering on Friday to remember the extraordinary generosity and kindness shown by their found families in Gander, as well as nearby communities throughout central Newfoundland.
Residents co-ordinated airport logistics, invited stranded passengers into their homes, prepared mass meals and transformed schools, churches and community halls into shelters.
They took their hospitality to what some still consider an extreme. In what Ms. Bass recalled as a bewildering act of kindheartedness from Mr. Woodford, he handed her the keys to his truck when they struck up a conversation at the airport while he was on a break.
“Here’s this guy who I don’t even know. He said, ‘You can have the keys to my truck.’ I’m looking at him like he’s crazy,” she said, still in disbelief all these years later.
When she asked if he was afraid she might steal his truck, he told her: “Well, you’re on an island. Where are you going to go?”
To Mr. Woodford, it was just a small act of humanity – of faith in a complete stranger – at a time when the world seemed like it was ending. It was moments like these that, for many people in town, paved the way to lifelong friendships. Like many others, Mr. Woodford and Ms. Bass stayed in touch, visiting back and forth in Gander and Denton, Tex., over the years, celebrating milestones and bonding with each others’ family members.
The emotions of those trying days and the bonds that resulted are depicted in the Tony award-winning musical Come From Away, which debuted in 2015 and has been produced in countries around the world. This year, it returned to Gander for its fourth season.
Gander’s kindness, which became a symbol of co-operation between Canada and the U.S., has also been immortalized in a new Heritage Minute. It is circulating at a time of intense political and economic strife between the two countries.
Many of the travellers stranded by Sept. 11 found shelter at Elks Club 310, which still has a board of photos from that day and thank-you letters from afterward.
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Come From Away, a musical about Gander’s kindness, is still a big draw at the Joseph R. Smallwood Arts and Culture Centre.
On Friday, the friendship and connection between Americans and Canadians is nonetheless being venerated at a commemoration service that will honour the victims of the attacks as well as the first responders. Hundreds of “plane people” are expected to attend an afternoon ceremony at the local arena, as well as dignitaries including Governor-General Louise Arbour; Jean Chrétien, who was prime minister during the attacks; and U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra.
Last week, the Town of Gander defended its decision to host Mr. Hoekstra, who has amplified the rhetoric of U.S. President Donald Trump in the escalating trade war instigated by his administration. Mayor Percy Farwell, who was deputy mayor 25 years ago, encouraged Newfoundlanders to rise above the disrespect and stay true to their welcoming hearts.
“We’re remembering the great tragedy and the great loss, and we’re trying to reflect on those who lost their lives and support those that lost loved ones and that were permanently impacted by those events,” he said during an interview last week.
“We reflect on how we, as a twist of fate, became involved in a specific way – in being able to provide support to impacted people – and how much we value that. Those sorts of things transcend any emotions we might have around the latest Truth Social post or the latest version of trade talks.”
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Mayor Percy Farwell stops by the Compassion Monument, made from a steel beam from the World Trade Center. It was a gift from New York’s Bethpage Fire Department.
It was a message heard repeatedly about town this week as locals reunited with their “plane people” friends and attended storytelling events, tours of the airport, performances of Come From Away and screech-in ceremonies to welcome visitors at the local Royal Canadian Legion.
Monica Burke, who now lives in the state of Georgia, was on her way home to Seattle on 9/11 when her flight was diverted to Gander. Returning to that legion hall on Wednesday evening caused a flood of memories to come back.
She recalled the spot on the floor across the room where she dozed on a borrowed mattress, waiting to make a call on the one telephone that people were taking turns using. And she remembered Beulah Copper, a legion volunteer, walking in and offering to drive Ms. Burke and others to a payphone at a nearby hotel.
Ms. Cooper invited Ms. Burke to stay in the spare bedroom in her home, and cooked her hot breakfasts during her stay. Since then, the two have stayed in touch over multiple visits. Ms. Burke thinks of her older friend as a grandmother.
“I just wanted to come back and thank them,” said Ms. Burke. “And then one time wasn’t enough. So I just keep coming back – especially now, being 25 years, a lot of people who were here aren’t here anymore, and it’s sad. It’s what happens, but I want to see the people that I can while I can.”
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Monica Burke has come back to Gander several times to show gratitude for the hospitality she found here 25 years ago.
On Wednesday night, Ms. Cooper was again at the legion hall, busy screeching in a bunch of Americans. The welcoming ritual makes “come from aways” into honorary Newfoundlanders. At a long table, visitors from Ohio and New York and Illinois shuddered as they slung back shots of dark Newfoundland Screech rum and Ms. Cooper presented a frozen cod for them to kiss right on the lips (through a plastic bag).
Karen Stringer, wearing an anti-Trump pin and about to get screeched in, said she felt compelled to come to Gander for the 9/11 anniversary commemoration because of Come From Away, which is playing right now in her home city of Peoria, Ill.
“I need to support Canada,” she said. “It wasn’t until years later that we realized what Canada did and I think it’s important that we pay respects to this country and say thank you.”
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Karen Stringer from Illinois gets ‘screeched in’ by Beulah Cooper, one of the volunteers who helped travellers in 2001. Kissing the cod is part of a ritual to make someone an honorary Newfoundlander.
Strangers from all over the world received comfort from the area’s townspeople during the frightening hours and days after 9/11 – hearing their stories, eating their home cooking, using their spare bedding.
Diane Davis, a Grade 3 French immersion teacher who helped convert Gander Academy into a makeshift shelter for 770 stranded passengers from four flights, inspired a composite character in Come From Away – down to her green Northern Reflections pants and a flowery patterned shirt “that didn’t hide nearly as many sins as I used to think it did,” she joked in a recent interview.
She said that at the time, she was just doing what any Newfoundlander would do. But it has provided her with opportunities to travel the world and keep telling her story – and that’s important, especially now, she said.
“It’s really difficult for a lot of people in the political climate that we’re in right now, where Canada is being so misrepresented and a lot of other things are being misrepresented by the American government. I think it’s really important to keep telling these stories,” she said. “Not to say that we’re any better, but just that we’ve always been there to help.”
Retired teacher Diane Davis, who partly inspired one of the characters in the musical, has plenty of Come From Away clothing and fridge magnets at home.
Municipal police officer Oswald Fudge and his daughter Lisa, who was in high school at the time, shared their story, too.
They decided to host a special birthday party for the children who were stranded because of the terrorist attack. While only six kids were celebrating birthdays in the days that followed Sept. 11, they organized a party for 60 kids. Some of them were terminally ill and had been diverted to Gander on their way to Disney World.
Within hours, father and daughter had dozens of toys donated by the local Canadian Tire, and filled a 12-foot table with sheet cakes provided by the Co-op grocery store and stacked boxes from Mary Brown’s Chicken.
They also assembled an array of fuzzy mascots – an RCMP bear in red serge, two Cooper the Bear representatives from Co-op, a chicken from Mary Brown’s and the town spokesgoose Commander Gander, worn by Ms. Fudge. There were also clowns and teen girls dressed up as Tinkerbell’s fairies flitting about the room.
“It wasn’t quite Disney World, but we still had bears and chickens and fairies,” Ms. Fudge recalled.
Carousing and playing seemed like a reprieve from the children’s stressful circumstances, she said.
“Done the cockles of your heart good to watch what was going on. It was just an amazing thing,” Mr. Fudge said.
He said that someone recently asked him: If 9/11 happened today, would he still do what he did?
“I said, in a heartbeat. … In Newfoundland and Labrador, it’s not even a question.”
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Oswald Fudge was a police officer, and his daughter Lisa Fudge a high-school student, when the planes came to Gander on Sept. 11, 2001.
Residents have taken that spirit – and the mayor’s advice – to heart. All over Gander, there are signs of solidarity and lasting friendship between Canada and the U.S. American and Canadian flags placed side by side in the entranceway of the town hall. A pin of the twin towers on a crocheted square at the local arts centre.
The solidarity runs even deeper than what happened 25 years ago. Take the history of the airport, and of the town itself.
After its first plane landing in 1938, the airport in Gander became the main staging point during the Second World War for American and British allies to ferry thousands of bombers and fighter planes across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. Up to 12,000 soldiers lived in barracks beside and between the runways, a settlement that was abandoned when the town was incorporated in 1958.
“So these people are still our friends,” said Mr. Woodford, the retired air traffic controller who now serves as a town councillor.
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Mr. Woodford and his wife, Glenda, opened their home 25 years ago to six stranded people.
He recalled how, in addition to helping land some of the diverted flights in Gander on 9/11, he organized a shelter for the Knights of Columbus. He and his wife Glenda also took in six stranded strangers at their home. His voice cracked with emotion as he described how the daughter of one woman they hosted recently called to share that she had died.
“We didn’t know who, where these people were from, what their backgrounds were. We didn’t do any checks. We were just asked to welcome them, and we did,” he said.
He was one of the local volunteers and political leaders invited to a thank-you breakfast hosted by Ambassador Hoekstra in gratitude for what they did in the aftermath of 9/11.
“I think it might be challenging at times, but the one thing I promise you I will not do is talk politics. This is not a political event,” he said in the lead-up to the event. “This is an event to demonstrate and remember the good deeds. We’re going to commemorate what happened on Sept. 11 and we’re going to celebrate what happened on Sept. 12, 13, 14, 15.”
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Jeanette Gutierrez, a survivor of 9/11, values the sense of safety she finds in Gander.
Every September, Jeanette Gutierrez returns to Gander.
Sitting in the bar at the Gander airport this week, the survivor of the attacks in New York said the warmth and goodwill the town represents have made it a safe haven.
She recounted first visiting Gander with a group of museum volunteers a decade ago. This place and its people, including a local woman she met while being screeched in, have become a refuge.
“It’s just safer for me here, safer in my soul. When I’m in New York it’s awful, but here, it’s not,” she said, on the verge of tears.
“I’m allowed to feel good here.”