Free The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim Defede Page A

decided it was better to get it over with.
    Slowly, almost tiptoeing, she continued into the room, casting a small arc to the back of the crowd. Looking up, she saw the live reports from the rubble of the towers. At that moment she, too, became transfixed, mouth slightly agape, eyes wide and watery.
    Roxanne had never been to New York, but she’d always wanted to go. Now, she thought, so much of it will never be the same again. It wasn’t long before she saw a replay of the planes—big commercial airliners like the one she’d boarded that morning—crashing into the buildings, creating orange fireballs. Finally she watched as each tower caved in on itself.
    She watched for almost an hour. Numbed by the repetition. Although standing in a crowd, she didn’t want to be alone anymore. She went back to the family room and sat down on the mattress next to Clark.
    “It’s bad,” she said. “You should go see.”
    Clark stood and walked into the main room. Shock quickly gave way to anger as he watched CNN. Why would someone do this? Who would want to kill so many innocent people? The more he watched, the angrier he became until finally he knew he shouldn’t watch any longer. In the family room one of the babies was crying. He crawled into bed alongside Alexandria and Roxanne and closed his eyes. He wanted to go to sleep. He wanted this day to be over.
     
     
    F inally some good news. After several hours, New York State trooper George Vitale received word that his sister was alive. At first he didn’t quite believe it. He wondered if the trooper in Albany who passed along the information had somehow made a mistake and confused Patty with Vitale’s other sister.
    “Are you sure it was Patty you spoke to?” Vitale asked the trooper.
    “Yes,” the trooper insisted. Through an odd twist of fate, Patty was shopping in one of the stores under the World Trade Center when the first plane hit, and she immediately left the area. Vitale was relieved. He also felt a bit silly for all the plans he was mentally making to raise his nephew under the assumption that Patty might be dead.
    As time passed, Vitale continued to receive only snippets of information. Officials at the airport weren’t providing any updates, nor were the air-traffic controllers. The pilot even told Vitale the plane’s radio was useless. They needed to be in the air for the captain to call back to Continental’s home base in Houston to find out what was happening. And he assumed that any attempts to pick up a commercial radio station while they were sitting on the tarmac would be futile.
    Most of the information passengers had gathered came from the brief telephone calls they were making to family members. Rumors began circulating that both towers had collapsed. Vitale didn’t think this was possible. Then he finally discovered it was true. Worse still, there were scores of firefighters and police officers in the buildings at the time.
    Vitale had a new worry. His best friend through high school, Anthony DeRubbio, was a New York City firefighter. For that matter, virtually the entire DeRubbio family was made up of firefighters. Three of Anthony’s brothers—Dominick, Robert, and David—were in the FDNY. Vitale’s thoughts were with Anthony. They were the same age and had gone to the same schools—St. Agatha’s Elementary in Brooklyn and Aviation High School in Queens. The reason Vitale went to Aviation was that it was where Anthony wanted to go. Their birthdays were just six days apart. Vitale was born on September 19. Anthony’s birthday was September 25. When they were kids, Vitale would never let Anthony forget that he was older. Could Anthony really be gone?
    During the flight, Tom McKeon was sitting in the row just ahead of Vitale, and the two men started talking soon after landing. When Vitale told McKeon he was positive the towers had collapsed, McKeon was just as certain Vitale must be mistaken.
    Vitale lent McKeon his phone so he could call