In November of 2005, I took a flight from Nashville to St. John’s International Airport at the eastern tip of Newfoundland, Canada, then rented a car and drove north for about four hours through a beautiful, rugged landscape of rock, water and white birch trees.
The drive took me past road signs and place names that begged to be spoken aloud — Mt. Pearl, Spread Eagle, Come By Chance, Goobies Station, Lady Cove and Terra Nova, to name a few.
I was on a reporting trip for the Kentucky New Era. It was several weeks ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Dec. 12, 1985, air crash at Gander that killed 248 soldiers who were headed home to Fort Campbell for the holidays.
Although my assignment was focused on the air crash and its impact on Gander and Fort Campbell, I was also aware of another major event in the Canadian town’s history.
Gander’s townspeople had distinguished themselves for a remarkable level of hospitality following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. On that day, 7,000 airline passengers were stranded in Gander because U.S. airspace was shut down, which grounded air traffic across the North American continent. Gander took in the passengers, who were transported throughout the town to every home, hotel and community building with a bed to spare.
To prepare for my trip to Gander, I had read about the town’s extraordinary response to Sept. 11 in Jim DeFede’s book, “The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland.” This account led me to believe that I would be greeted warmly as I went about Gander for four days interviewing public officials, health care workers, historians and residents.
I was not wrong, and no one made this more clear than Eileen Elms, who welcomed me into her home and introduced me to many of her friends at a church coffee hour.
At that time, Eileen had been living in Gander longer than any other resident. She had arrived at age 6 in 1940, when the town was just a cluster of houses near the new airport. Her father was an electrician hired to install runway lights. Newfoundland, an island that was not yet a province of Canada, had been chosen for an important and secretive mission. The airport and its community were carved out of a wilderness. It became a critical refueling site during World War II.
And as Sept. 11 demonstrated, Gander has remained a crucial safe place for transatlantic air travelers.
My reminiscing about Gander and people like Eileen Elms is not random.
They came to mind this week when I saw that Hopkinsville’s community theater group, Campanile Productions, will stage the musical “Come From Away” in September at the Alhambra Theatre. The show tells the story of the goodwill that Gander extended to thousands of stranded travelers after the terror attacks.
Read our story about the Campanile show here. Tickets are on sale now. I’m eager to see this one.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
