Terrorists crashed two planes into the Twin Towers as Kevin Tuerff and his boyfriend, who was also named Kevin, were flying back to Texas from a vacation in Paris, France.
The U.S. government soon closed American airspace, and air traffic control redirected their plane to a big airport in the small town of Gander, Newfoundland. Years later, when Irene Sankoff and David Hein would go on to write Come From Away—a Broadway smash hit musical about what happened to Tuerff and 7,000 other people who ended up stranded in Gander for a week—they would include the line that floated through his head the moment he felt a sudden drop in elevation. “I looked out the window and saw trees, and rocks, and nothing,” he said.
Newfoundland is the easternmost patch of land in North America (not including Greenland). During the middle of the 20th century the island’s little town of Gander—population 9,000—served as a crucial refueling stop for planes traveling to and from Europe. (Planes had a harder time hopping the pond back then.) The airport was built with a long runway to accommodate all the traffic, which came in handy on 9/11, when 38 planes were forced to land there.
“Looking back 18 years later, the first thing that I think about is that they didn’t have to let us off the plane,” Tuerff told me over the phone from his apartment in Texas. “There were people from 90 countries, and there were Arab Muslims on some of the planes. But they didn’t hesitate. They let these strangers into their churches, schools, and homes. We couldn’t bring luggage off the plane, so we all had nothing.”
As you’ll learn if you read Tuerff’s new book about his experiences, Channel of Peace, or if you see 5th Avenue Theater’s new production of Come From Away (which opens next week!), or if you watch the new documentary, You Are Here: A Come From Away Story on HBO, the people of Gander did everything they possibly could to help the “plane people” stranded on their runway. Food came down from the shelves. Shelters were arranged. They even turned the town’s hockey rink into a giant refrigerator for people to store food.
Though some plot points in the musical was added for dramatic effect, Tuerff says the show closely reflects his experience. “Somebody best described Come From Away as a ‘docu-musical’ because there are many lines the characters say that come straight from the people on the ground, including me,” he said.
Tuerff and his partner stayed at the College of North Atlantic for four days. He called it a “5-star refugee shelter.” Though the school had a cafeteria, telephones, and working internet, they didn’t have beds or a shower. After going a few days without showering, he and his boyfriend decided to walk to Wal-Mart to at least buy a change of clothes.
“We didn’t get more than 100 feet before someone pulled over and asked what we were doing,” Tuerff said. The people driving the car asked if the couple wanted a ride. They politely refused. A few moments later another car pulled over and offered a ride. They again said no. A few moments after that a third car pulled over, and finally the Kevins capitulated. “They drove us to the Wal-Mart and chatted us up the whole time. I think they invented Uber and didn’t know it,” he said.
The experience opened Tuerff’s eyes to the way Americans treat strangers. “While I was there I kept wondering if a small town in Texas would do the same, and I wasn’t sure they would,” he said.
The Trump administration’s recent changes to refugee policy have only added to his doubt. In September, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the U.S. will cut refugee admissions to 30,000 this year—the lowest number in 40 years. Meanwhile, the UN Refugee Agency estimates that 25.4 million people across the globe have been forced from their homes due to war and famine.
Though the people of Gander came through for the plane people back in 2001, Tuerff says the compassion they showed that week wasn’t an anomaly. After Come From Away premiered in Seattle in 2015, Tuerff traveled with the cast to Gander to check in on people he’d met on return trips over the years. This time he was introduced to Dianne Davis, a school teacher who had been taking time out of her day to help refugees. Newfoundland is the poorest province in Canada, and the people of Gander don’t have much money, either. Despite the lack of ample financial resources, Davis helped a handful of churches scrounge up enough money to adopt a Syrian family.
“That was really a transformative moment for me,” Tuerff said. “It made me ask, ‘What happened to America? Why can’t we regain that kind of compassion? You see it during natural disasters and terrorists attacks—but why can’t it happen more often?'”
Tuerff now volunteers to house refugees from all over the globe. “I call it the ripple effect of Gander’s compassion,” he said.
Right now he’s helping to settle a West African man who spent 7 months detained in the Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark, New Jersey. Tuerff said the man was forced to leave his home for safety reasons, and that he considered his months-long detention in the U.S. “torturous.” To add insult to injury, he was granted asylum on the day Trump referred to African nations as “shithole countries.”
“That was quite a day for him,” Tuerff said.
Though Tuerff is a gay, white, Catholic, and the refugee is a straight, black, Pentecostal minister living in a country increasingly hostile to immigrants, the two men have become close friends. “He calls me his twin,” Tuerff said.
