The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland (15 page)

The O’Rourkes certainly didn’t allow many things to come between them. Which is why having Hannah and Dennis trapped far away from home during a family tragedy was proving so difficult for everyone. They weren’t used to being apart.

Since the Trade Center towers had collapsed, family members had gathered at Kevin’s home in Cedarhurst, Long Island, to support his wife, Maryann, and their two daughters, seventeen-year-old Jamie and twenty-year-old Corrine. So many people were in the house those first few nights that they had to sleep on the floor in the living room. And it was during those moments when everyone was together that Hannah and Dennis’s absence was most felt.

Hannah, in particular, had always been the emotional rock for the family. Her strength was in the details, the day-to-day things that would keep them all going. Whether it was making sure there was food to eat or tending to the grandchildren or keeping everyone in the family informed about a particular event, Hannah instinctively knew what needed to be done during a family emergency.

Most of all, though, the family worried how the separation was affecting Hannah and Dennis’s ability to cope with their son being missing. They thanked God that Brendan and his girlfriend were with them. They knew Brendan was a real Irish character who could brighten their spirits. And they were relieved to hear there was a church only a few blocks from their shelter. They all knew how much Hannah’s faith meant to her. It was no coincidence, after all, that on his days off, Kevin would help patients in the hospital take Communion. He was his mother’s son.

They envisioned the way Hannah was probably occupying her time. In lighter moments, they couldn’t help but picture her in this remote locale, slowly imposing her will upon the people of Gander. If she’s there more than a week, they’d say and laugh, she’ll end up being elected mayor. Patricia imagined her mother focusing all of her energy on cleaning or cooking, as she normally did in a crisis.

“Every home in Gander will be spotless by the time she leaves,” Patricia would say, while the rest of the family laughed and nodded in agreement.

Nevertheless, they wanted Hannah and Dennis home. Desperate for a solution, they were hoping that Hillary Clinton’s Senate office might be able to arrange a special flight for Hannah and Dennis to bring them home immediately. There was little, however, the former first lady could do.

Their only link would remain the telephone.

By now everyone in the legion hall knew Hannah and Dennis and the pain they were experiencing. As soon as Patricia and Maryann or anyone else from the family called, whoever picked up the phone in the legion hall would offer a kind word—“We’re praying for all of you” or “Don’t worry, we’re taking good care of your folks”—and would then run to get them.

There was rarely anything new to tell Hannah or Dennis, which made the calls especially painful. Patricia, though, would try to be encouraging. She would cite news reports of people being pulled alive from the rubble. Nearly all of these reports eventually turned out to be false, but at the time it gave Patricia something hopeful to tell her mother. “They’re finding people, Ma,” she’d say. “They’re getting people out. They’re going to find Kevin.”

Maryann was no less emphatic during her conversations with Hannah and Dennis.

“They are going to have to prove to me that he’s dead,” Maryann told Hannah. “They’re going to have to find his body before I believe it.”

Following the news at the Lions Club.
Courtesy of Roxanne Loper

F
lying down the highway, lights flashing and sirens blaring away, the fire truck was on a special mission. There weren’t enough new toys in Gander for all of the children from the stranded planes, so the engine was sent on an emergency run to Grand Falls, fifty-five miles west of town. Inside the truck, Susan O’Donnell, the general manager of the Canadian Tire store in Gander, could barely contain her glee. Since Tuesday afternoon, her employees had been doing everything they could think of to help the passengers. And her company was backing them each step of the way.

No sooner had the first planes started to land in Gander than O’Donnell received a phone call from her bosses telling her she had carte blanche to donate everything in the store, if necessary, to the relief effort. “Anything the passengers need that you can provide, please do it,” she was instructed. Money was not to be an issue. The costs would be covered by the chain’s charitable organization, Foundation for Families. In fact, if another store had something the passengers needed, and that store had reached its limit in terms of donations, then O’Donnell was authorized to go in and buy it for the passengers. It was like a scene right out of
Miracle on 34th Street
.

Over the first few days, Canadian Tire donated almost $20,000 in its own merchandise and spent another $10,000 in other stores, including its chief competitor, Wal-Mart. Normally, O’Donnell can’t even bring herself to say Wal-Mart’s name aloud, referring to it instead as “that store.” For her, Wal-Mart is “that W-word.” In an emergency, however, there was no time for rivalries.

Canadian Tire donated sleeping bags, air mattresses, blankets, and bottles of water. One of the first things it donated, though, were toys. One of the firefighters in town realized there were a lot of kids among the passengers and wanted to give each of them a small toy to play with when they came off the plane. He contacted O’Donnell and Susanne Gillingham, the store manager, to see if they could help. Logistically, it would have been difficult to hand the toys out at the airport, so they worked out a plan to have the toys delivered to the various shelters. Canadian Tire sells toys only during Christmas, so its stock in Gander was fairly limited in early September. O’Donnell discovered, however, a warehouse full of toys in Grand Falls. When she explained the situation, the fire department lent her a truck and a driver, and off they went.

O’Donnell had one rule for the toys: nothing violent. No war toys. No guns. Not now, not with everything that had happened on September 11. Instead, O’Donnell loaded up on dolls and stuffed animals and board games and trucks and race cars. She even managed to find a few handheld computer games. She made sure that every toy that needed batteries had them. They filled up the back of the fire truck and raced home to Gander. The fire truck went from shelter to shelter, handing out toys to kids who would come running to greet them. Each day it made a loop of the shelters to make sure none of the kids was missed. Members of Gander’s volunteer fire department took turns going to the different schools, churches, and lodges so they could see the look on the kids’ faces when they pulled up. O’Donnell wasn’t sure how many toys they gave away or how much it cost. She just liked the feeling of being a Newfie Mrs. Claus.

A
fter a peaceful night sleeping in their tent, Sara Wood and Lisa Zale awoke in time for breakfast at the Knights of Columbus. Afterward they returned to their tent to do a little reading. They had picked up a whole stack of trashy magazines during their excursions about town the day before. Then it was down to the community center. The center doubles as an ice rink where hockey games are held, and the locker rooms had showers where passengers could wash up. A large contingent of teenage girls in town volunteered to work shifts at the center, keeping the place tidy and handing out towels and soap and shampoo.

After cleaning up, Wood and Zale went shopping for clothes at Wal-Mart, had a manicure and a pedicure at a beauty salon, and then swung by the Comfort Inn, where they knew their flight crew was staying. They found a couple of flight attendants and had lunch with them at Jungle Jim’s. The crew members had no idea when their flight was going to leave, they told the women. Wood and Zale weren’t too worried. They were starting to enjoy their time in Gander. For Zale in particular, it was a nice break from her three kids, two boys and a girl, ranging in age from nine to fifteen. There was no reason why her husband, Mark, couldn’t handle things for a few days. By the second day, though, Mark was calling the Knights of Columbus regularly.

“I’d like to speak to Lisa Zale,” he’d say.

“Who?”

“The girl in the tent,” he’d respond. “She’s one of the tent girls.”

“Oh, okay, hold on, I’ll get her.” He called so often with questions for his wife that folks started recognizing his voice.

Since there was a chance of rain Thursday night, the women walked back to Wal-Mart to pick up a couple of tarps to further insulate their tent. Everywhere they went around town, they brought their shopping cart, filling it with items they might need. People offered them rides, but they liked the freedom of walking. When they started lining their tent with the additional tarp, the other passengers told them they were definitely deranged if they were going to sleep outside in a tent during a rainstorm. But Wood and Zale loved their tent. They even bought a little chandelier for the inside. Well, not exactly a chandelier. It was just a flashlight they hung from the roof of the tent. As far as they were concerned, though, it was a chandelier, and nobody was going to tell them otherwise. And tonight, when the rain started to pelt their little green tent, they would put on the pajamas they bought at Wal-Mart, climb into their sleeping bags, read their trashy magazines, and eat leftover junk food. It would be a regular slumber party. The only thing missing, they thought, were the curlers to do each other’s hair, and a working telephone to make crank calls to boys.

T
here are reportedly only 144 Bonobo monkeys in captivity, including Cosana and her traveling companion, Unga. They’d been on their way from the Dierenpark Planckendael Zoo in Belgium to a zoo in Ohio when they were unexpectedly detoured into Gander. Cosana and Unga are part of an endangered species found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire, in Central Africa. Only twenty years ago there was thought to be 100,000 Bonobos. Today, according to a project known as the Bonobo Initiative, there are fewer than 3,000 in Africa.

Genetically speaking, no other animal is closer to a human being than a Bonobo monkey. Cousin to the chimpanzee, Bonobos even look more like humans than any other ape. And Bonobos are closer genetically to humans than they are to gorillas.

Thanks to Doc Tweedie’s efforts, the Bonobos were allowed off their plane and settled into the same hangar with the cats and dogs. For five days, their handler, Harry, rarely left the monkeys alone. Harry was so afraid of Unga and Cosana escaping that he wouldn’t allow them out of their traveling pens. Not even to wash out their cages.

From the standpoint of cleanliness, this wasn’t a problem. After going to the bathroom, the Bonobos actually picked up their tiny turds and passed them through the bars of the cage to Harry, who would then dispose of them. Cosana even took great care in tidying up around her cage. Each morning, she tossed to the ground all of the hay in her cage; then Harry held up a fresh batch of straw, and Cosana carefully selected the pieces she wanted for her bedding. Unga was less particular and would throw the hay around his cage, often making quite a mess.

The Bonobos were kept only a few feet from the portable kennels that held the dogs and cats. The monkeys seemed absolutely fascinated by the other animals, particularly the dogs. After a while they even tried to imitate the barking sounds of the dogs. Whether the pair was attempting to mimic or to mock the dogs no one could tell.

Watching Cosana and Unga was a real treat for Tweedie, who spends most of his time around the region’s livestock. He peppered Harry with questions about the animals. Tweedie appreciated Harry’s devotion to the animals, but also felt sorry for the handler, because he was actually sleeping at the airport alongside the monkeys. After a couple of nights, the veterinarian finally convinced Harry to come home with him for dinner. Two hours later Harry was back at the airport caring for the animals.

P
atsy Vey had trouble concentrating at work and decided to spend the day helping the stranded passengers instead. A family from Saudi Arabia had just finished showering in her home when her phone rang. Early on she—along with a few hundred other people—had placed her name on a list of folks who would be willing to allow passengers to shower in their homes. Rather than wait for them to get to her name on the list, she had gone out earlier that day to one of the shelters and found a family anxious for a chance to use her bathroom.

Now the folks working through the phone list were calling to see if she could let an elderly couple shower and get cleaned up at her house. Vey couldn’t bring herself to say no. Instead, she told them she’d be right down. The couple’s name was John and Marie Uncle, and once Vey picked them up, she realized she couldn’t bring the Uncles back to her house. She hadn’t properly cleaned her bathroom after her most recent guests. Worst of all, she had no fresh towels left.

Suddenly it hit her. She’d bring them to her friend’s home. Sure enough, when she called, the friend was happy to oblige. “Come on over,” Vey’s friend exclaimed. On the way to her friend’s house, Vey discovered that the Uncles were from Alexandria, Virginia. Vey’s daughter, Kelly, lived in Alexandria. “What a splendid coincidence,” she said. As they continued to talk, the Uncles said their daughter, Peggy, was upset that her parents were marooned in a town she had never heard of before. Vey told the Uncles she had the perfect solution for Peggy’s worries. Vey would have Kelly call Peggy and allay her fears. That night, Kelly Vey went one step better. She met Peggy in person and assured her over dinner that there wasn’t a better place in the world to be trapped in than Gander.