The tiny Canadian town where 7,000 people found refuge on 9/11

Air passengers who had their planes diverted to Gander, Newfoundland, recall the terror in the skies and the kindness of strangers on the ground

Jim DeFedeSunday August 22 2021, 12.01am BST, The Sunday TimesShareSave

The beaten-up Volvo rattled to a stop in front of Lakewood Academy. The driver climbed out and, along with her son, lowered the station wagon’s tailgate and slid an enormous pot out of the car. Struggling to carry it to the school’s front door, a pair of men lifted it from them and brought it into the building. The mother and son returned to their car and drove off. Hardly a word was spoken.

Rabbi Leivi Sudak watched the scene unfold with intense curiosity. Since arriving in Newfoundland the day before — September 11, 2001 — he was looking for signs as to why he was one of the nearly 7,000 passengers, from 38 international flights, who had been diverted to the small Canadian town of Gander.

Rabbi Sudak was flying from London to New York on that tragic September morning. He planned to pay his respects at the grave of the longtime leader of the Lubavitch movement, an ultra-orthodox branch of Judaism, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Sudak would say his prayers, return to the airport and arrive home in Edgware that night.

Rabbi Leivi Sudak questioned why he had been brought to Gander

Instead he found himself stranded in this Canadian province, where 97 per cent of the population is either Catholic or Protestant and the only synagogue is more than 200 miles away. In his mind the question remained: why did God bring him to this place? “I was constantly looking for reasons,” he now recalls 20 years later. “Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is my function?”

Perhaps the pot held an answer, he thought. He learnt that a local family, who had received a hard-to-come-by permit during hunting season, decided instead of storing the moose they’d killed to get them through the winter, they would use a portion of it to help feed all those stranded passengers.

“They took this precious meat and made this massive stew for the visitors,” Sudak explains. “They’d driven a distance of 100km to deliver it. This was just one example of the outpouring of kindness, of generosity, from these people.”

The stew offered a lesson of charity. But the Orthodox rabbi was still looking for an answer to the question of why he was there. In a matter of days he would have his answer, and as he told me recently it changed his life for ever.

American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8.46am on September 11, 2001. Seventeen minutes later United Airlines Flight 175 slammed into the South Tower. At 9.37am American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon near Washington DC. A fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines 93, crashed into a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought to take back control of the aircraft that the hijackers had intended to crash into the US Capitol building.

Television coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Center

From that moment on, every plane in the air was considered a threat.

“Get those goddamn planes down,” Norman Mineta, then US transportation secretary, shouted to his staff from a bunker under the White House.

The order to close US airspace had never been given before. Every civilian aircraft — 4,546 planes, ranging from private Cessnas to jumbo jets — was told to land immediately at the closest available airport. At the same time all international flights heading to the United States were told to turn back or find another country to land in. Pilots were warned that if they entered US airspace they would be shot down.

Approximately 400 international flights were already in the air during the September 11 attacks, the majority coming from Europe. Some planes turned back, but many continued on, believing that by the time they reached the United States the skies would be reopened.

The Lufthansa captain Reinhard Knoth remembers those initial moments well. Flying an older model 747 from Frankfurt to New York, he had just turned on the autopilot when he picked up scattered radio transmissions between pilots from other airlines. “There’s something happening in New York,” a KLM pilot excitedly announced. “An accident.”

Lufthansa captain Reinhard KnothFLORIAN SIEBECK

Knoth switched to the BBC and listened as they broadcast the first reports of a plane crashing into the North Tower. Knoth and his co-pilot speculated it was probably a small plane and maybe the pilot had suffered a heart attack. Then suddenly the BBC announcer declared that a second plane had hit the towers. Knoth knew this was no accident. A pilot for 30 years, he understood that no crew would deliberately crash their plane into a building. Those planes were hijacked.

He sent a teletype message to Lufthansa headquarters in Germany asking for instructions. Should he turn back? He was reaching a point of no return over the Atlantic — 30 degrees longitude. Once you cross it, you are committed to flying to North America. But he heard nothing, and as the minutes ticked away he crossed that invisible line. There was no turning back now.

His thoughts turned to a different concern. There were 354 passengers on his plane, including Petra Roth, the mayor of Frankfurt, and Werner Baldessarini, the chairman of Hugo Boss. Were any of his passengers would-be hijackers waiting to take over the aircraft? Knoth looked over his shoulder at the cockpit door. It wasn’t very sturdy. And then he realised something else: it wasn’t even locked.

Radar imagery from Gander airport at the time

As Knoth and scores of other pilots continued their long flights toward the US, American fighters were flying sorties over big US cities. If Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the attack — as officials quickly surmised — he had cells operating in Europe. Could those European flights still harbour terrorists? Were they waiting to strike once the planes came close to their destinations? The US wasn’t taking any chances. The order to shoot down any plane entering US airspace remained.

Jean Chrétien, the Canadian prime minister, watched the towers fall on television. His security detail wanted to move him out of the prime minister’s residence and into a secure location. “I declined,” Chrétien says with a dismissive shrug. “We were not going into hiding.”

Recalling that fateful day, Chrétien tells me he always thought the US decision to deny entry to the planes flying in from Europe was too extreme. “We felt it was a bit panicky in our judgment,” Chrétien says. “We decided to keep our sky open. I could tell you that was a very difficult decision. But for us we felt that it was the right thing to do. The planes were in the air and they had to land somewhere.”

In the end more than 250 aircraft, carrying 43,895 people, were diverted to 15 Canadian airports, from Vancouver in the west to St John’s in the east.

One town, however, became synonymous with the effort: Gander, located in the heart of the island province of Newfoundland. Thirty-eight planes were diverted to Gander, delivering 6,595 passengers and crew into a town of barely 10,000 people.

The runway at Gander airport on September 12, 2001REUTERS

In my 2002 book, The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland, I wrote: “For the better part of a week, nearly every man, woman and child in Gander and the surrounding smaller towns — places with names like Gambo and Appleton and Lewisporte and Norris Arm — 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. They affirmed the basic goodness of man at a time when it was easy to doubt such humanity still existed.”

In the 20 years since I first visited Gander to research my book, I’ve kept in touch with the townspeople and the passengers I interviewed (several of whom are portrayed in Come from Away, the hit musical about Gander, now in the West End). As the anniversary of 9/11 looms and the world recalls the darkness that surrounded the worst terrorist attack in US history — which led to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq — the memories of those who landed in Gander offer a unique perspective.

Roxanne Loper, 28, was on Lufthansa Flight 438 from Frankfurt to Dallas. She and her husband were coming home with a two-year-old girl they had adopted in Kazakhstan. Without warning the plane dramatically slowed and made a hard right turn. Staring at the television on the back of the seat in front of her, she could see the plane was no longer heading towards the US but instead north towards the nearest point of land in Canada. Was there a problem? Was he trying to reach land because there was something wrong with the plane?

Roxanne and Clarke Loper with little Alexandria in 2001COURTESY OF THE LOPER FAMILY

The pilot made an announcement in German. Loper couldn’t understand what he was saying but she recalls the other passengers gasping in shock. Another passenger leant in and told Loper and her husband the Americans weren’t allowing any planes to enter the US. They were going to land in Canada instead.

“People were scared,” she says. “We knew something bad must have happened but they wouldn’t tell us what it was.” The young couple held their new daughter as prayers murmured through the plane.

Aboard Aer Lingus Flight 105 from Dublin to New York, the pilot was more forthcoming. “Terrorists have struck the Twin Towers,” he explained. “We’ll be landing in Gander. I’ll keep you informed as I learn more. Please stay calm.” The words shot through 67-year-old Hannah O’Rourke. Her son Kevin was a New York firefighter and a member of an elite fire rescue team located in Brooklyn just across the bridge to Manhattan. If he was on duty, Hannah knew he would be in the centre of danger.

George Vitale, 42, was studying for a night school class when the pilot of Continental Flight 23 announced there had been a terrorist attack in the US. “I’m going to be busy, so I’ll talk to you when we land,” he said. “We’ll be on the ground in 15 minutes.” A New York state trooper, Vitale was part of the security detail for the New York governor George Pataki. He felt guilty he wasn’t there with him.

George Vitale with Derm Flynn, the mayor of Appleton, and Tom McKeon

As Loper, O’Rourke and Vitale were imagining the worst, folk in Gander didn’t have time to think. They were told to get ready for planes and passengers — lots of them. School bus drivers, who were in the middle of a strike, laid down their picket signs and readied their buses to ferry passengers from the airport to town. Off-duty air traffic controllers showed up at the tower without being called. Churches, schools and social clubs, such as the Royal Canadian Legion, where passengers would be housed, put out an urgent call for bedding supplies.

In many ways Gander and Newfoundland were both uniquely suited to handle this moment. A part of the British Empire since John Cabot landed there in 1497, generations of Newfoundlanders had developed a steely sense of reliance on one another. In 1949 they voted (by the narrowest of margins) to join Canada. Gander itself was founded in the run-up to the Second World War, after the US and Britain agreed in 1938 to build the largest military air base in the world. Supplies and troops on their way to Europe needed to stop in Gander to refuel. More than 20,000 fighters and heavy bombers, manufactured in the US, stopped in Gander before joining the war effort.

Volunteers in Gander prepare hot meals for passengers

After the war the base was converted to civilian use, allowing passenger planes to refuel there. Time, however, was not kind to Gander. With the advent of the jet engine the need for a refuelling stop evaporated, and the town slowly wilted as Gander lost its purpose for existing. Then 9/11 happened and those long runways that could accommodate jumbo jets were critical.

“Newfoundlanders are a different breed of people,” the Gander town constable Oz Fudge told me. “A Newfoundlander likes to put his arm around a person and say, ‘It’s going to be all right. I’m here. It’s going to be OK. We’re your friend. We’re your buddy. We’ve got you.’ That’s the way it’s always been. That’s the way it always will be. And that’s the way it was on September 11.”

Gander’s town constable Oz Fudge says Newfoundlanders are a ‘different breed’USA TODAY

The first plane to land in Gander that morning was Virgin Air Flight 75 on its way from Manchester to Orlando, Florida, with 337 passengers, mostly kids and parents on their way to Disney World. As the planes landed police officers took up positions around the aircraft, still uncertain what might be happening on board.

Once cleared through security, each planeload of passengers was housed together. Roxanne Loper and her fellow travellers were assigned to the Lion’s Club. Hannah O’Rourke’s plane was dispatched to the Royal Canadian Legion Hall. George Vitale got lucky. His flight was sent to the neighbouring town of Appleton, where many of the locals opened their homes to the plane people, as they were being called. Vitale stayed with the town’s mayor, Derm Flynn. And Rabbi Sudak’s flight was sent to Lakewood Academy, a school just outside Gander in the town of Glenwood. Population 778.

A school bus is used for transport

As they look back on those days, all of the passengers say they couldn’t believe the kindness they were shown. People opened their homes and allowed complete strangers to come in and take showers. When a Gander woman spotted two young ladies walking down the street, exploring the town, she came running out of her house and handed them the keys to her car and told them to feel free to use it. The manager of one of the town’s two department stores emptied her warehouse of toys so members of the volunteer fire department could race through the streets, sirens blaring, delivering gifts to every child who was on a plane.

A party for stranded children

While the world was in turmoil, these passengers had found a bubble where the madness didn’t exist. “I still get a lot of messages, just thanking me and the people of Gander and all the surrounding towns,” Constable Fudge tells me. “I respond to them all. And I’ve talked to a lot of people, and they always ask why we did it. They can’t figure it out. I tell them that for us it’s normal. I’m still not sure what all the fuss is about.”

Alexandria, the child that Roxanne Loper and her husband adopted, turned 22 this year. She has no memory of Gander but knows the story well. “I keep looking back on it,” Alexandria tells me. “Every anniversary I think about what happened. The dark side of that day and then what my parents experienced. My family was subjected to such a large act of kindness in Gander.” Today she is studying early childhood education and wants to be a junior school teacher. “I’ve always wanted a job where I can help someone,” she says.

Alexandria today

Twenty years later and George Vitale remains filled with an enormous sense of guilt. On the tenth anniversary of 9/11 a memorial was opened on the site where the Twin Towers collapsed. Vitale can’t bring himself to visit the memorial, which is not far from his home in Brooklyn. “I just can’t,” he says, his voice breaking with emotion.

His experience in Gander and the friends he made stand in sharp contrast to the tragic events of that day. “I had such a wonderful experience in Gander, and that’s so hard to reconcile with what happened in my own back yard to people I knew that are no longer here,” he says. “That has never left me, the feeling of love by perfect strangers that looked after us. You know, I never experienced anything like that in my life.”

A school gym turned into a shelter

Vitale cries as he speaks. “And what has also never left me is the horrific brutality of the evil perpetrated on innocent citizens.”

No one understood that evil more than Hannah O’Rourke. A day after arriving in Gander aboard the Aer Lingus flight with her husband, Dennis, Hannah learnt that her son Kevin, the New York firefighter, was not only working but was missing. Every morning while in Gander, Hannah walked to a nearby Catholic Church and prayed. When she returned to the Legion Hall, several women would sit with her to keep her company, encouraging her to stay positive. One local woman, Beulah Cooper, would try telling her jokes.

Hannah and Dennis O’Rourke with their son Kevin, centre, who died in 9/11COURTESY OF HANNAH O’ROURKE

Twenty years later the two women continue to talk almost every month. In the years since 9/11 both their husbands have died. Now well into their eighties, the grief they share is rooted in friendship. “Life has to go on, we both know that,” Beulah tells me. “There’s not a lot more you can say. It’s just hard sometimes.”

It wasn’t until Hannah made it home from Gander that her worst fears were confirmed. Kevin’s body was found amid the 1.8 million tonnes of rubble on September 23, 2001. Fire officials believe he was in the stairwell of the North Tower, somewhere between the 65th and 70th floors, when it collapsed. He was 44. Every September 11, Hannah and her family visit Kevin’s grave. They pass around a flask of whiskey and reminisce.

When my book was published, I delivered a copy to Hannah and Dennis O’Rourke. The first anniversary of 9/11 was approaching and this was a difficult time, especially for Hannah, who was uncharacteristically quiet as I sat in their living room. My visit, however, offered her family a chance to remind Hannah of the colourful characters she met in Gander, including Beulah. Sharing those stories brought a smile to Hannah’s face and it was in that moment that I fully appreciated the significance of those days. Because in the midst of perhaps the worst moment in Hannah’s life, the people in Gander provided something she could hold on to that wasn’t sad and painful.

“I know what you are referring to,” Hannah’s daughter, Patricia, tells me. “You can see the lightbulb has dimmed down on her at times. And then like you said, if you bring up something, it just kind of brightens her back up. There is sadness. There is despair but through all of that there are good memories; you hate to say that, but there are good memories of the despair. It’s kind of like in your darkest moment someone shines a light for you and it brings a little brightness to a moment you want to forget.”

American airspace reopened on September 13, 2001, and over the ensuing days the Plane People departed. By that Sunday, September 16, all the passengers were on their way home. Rabbi Leivi Sudak was among the last to leave.

Residents and passengers pose outside the last plane to leave after 9/11

During his time in Gander, Sudak met some wonderful people as well and witnessed incredible acts of generosity, but he still hadn’t found the answer to the question of why he was there. He asked if there were any Jews in Gander he could meet with. On Saturday, September 15, a man in poor health arrived at the school. He shook the rabbi’s hand and introduced himself as Ed Brake.

Only a handful of people in Gander knew the truth about Brake. He was born in Poland to Jewish parents who paid to have him smuggled to England before the start of the Second World War as part of the Kindertransport, which helped nearly 10,000 Jewish children escape the Nazis.

“The chief rabbi of Berlin got on the train as the children are about to leave,” Brake told Sudak. “And he said to them, ‘Children, there are bad times ahead. We don’t know what’s going to be the outcome. You’re going to have to go to another land and you will re-establish yourselves.’”

Adopted by a family heading to Newfoundland, he was given the name Ed, raised Catholic and told never to tell anyone he was Jewish. When Brake asked about his Jewish heritage, he claimed, his adoptive parents became angry, even physically abusive. Even as an adult Brake hid from people that he was a Jew, only admitting his ancestry to his wife and children a few years earlier. For six decades Brake had never stepped into a synagogue or spoken to a rabbi. Until now.

Multiple diverted planes stranded at Gander airport after 9/11GANDER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

The arrival of Sudak stirred emotions in Brake he had long suppressed. A friend who knew the truth encouraged him to see the rabbi. In his dreams Brake started hearing the religious music played in his home before leaving Europe. The next night his mother came to him in a dream, a sign he should set aside his fears.

When he arrived at the school, Brake wasn’t sure where to begin. Sudak just encouraged him to say what was on his mind. Brake shared his childhood memories of the Nazis, as well as the small bits and pieces he remembered about his parents, who almost certainly died in the camps. Although he kept his Judaism private, he showed the rabbi his walking stick. On the top of the cane, the part he covers with his hand, he had engraved a small Star of David.

He told the rabbi he came because he wanted to share his story with someone before he died, so that his life would be remembered. After spending the afternoon together, Brake left and Sudak now had the answer to his question.

Brake died on October 13, 2008. The funeral was held at Gander’s Roman Catholic church and he was buried nearby in All Saint’s Cemetery. There is still no synagogue in Gander.

Sudak continues to find meaning in his detour to Gander. “I see people differently,” he says. “I look at people differently.” He explains how he tries to find the good in people. I’m surprised by his response, telling him that as a rabbi I would have thought he would have already been doing that. “Not as consciously as I have since being there,” he admits. In the years following his return to London, he often cites Gander as an example of what is possible in the world. “You have to learn from this,” he tells people. “The message is sacred.”United StatesShareSaveComments(50)

Comments are subject to our community guidelines, which can be viewed here.Nancy McClreNSort by