One town’s beacon of 9/11 kindness: Gander shines on
Charlotte Gushue was a Canadian third grader when four hijacked airplanes were used to perpetrate the deadliest foreign attack on U.S. soil. She hardly understood it. What she knew was that thousands of passengers, on flights suddenly barred from entering American airspace, landed in this small town in Newfoundland and that she was sent home from school.
A troublemaker back then by her own admission, she read the room and stayed quiet. When her mother, between hurried phone calls, asked her to go up and look through her books and stuffed animals to donate, she was mad.
Teeth gritted, she did it anyway.
Like most children in Gander on 9/11, Charlotte got the rest of the week off from class, as schools immediately turned into shelters. But this was no snow day: Oz Fudge, who was on patrol as police constable, saw kids helping their parents drop off food, clean sheets, and toothbrushes, and some even cleaning toilet bowls.
“It just done the cockles of my heart,” he says.
Charlotte returned with her parents to her school and understood something major was happening:
