The Lions of Lewisporte Tri-Village Lions Club member attributes her life to the Lions By Sarah Robinson
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ruse.’ He said, ‘Actually, the equipment is fine, but there’s a national emergency in the United States, all the borders are closed and the air space is under control of the military,’” Brooks-Jones says. “The next thing he said is, ‘A plane has hit one of the twin towers in New York,’ and that’s when my mind went back to the second World War. I’m thinking, ‘But why would the borders be closed?’ Then, he said, ‘The Pentagon has been hit, and something has happened outside of Pittsburgh.’” For 28 hours, passengers sat in their planes on the tarmac, listening to updates from the captain as he tuned in to international radios to hear news of what was happening in New York. Passengers on the plane didn’t know what was happening across the United States, when they might be able to return home or how to move forward. But for the
September/October 2021 • www.trivillagemagazine.com
Photos courtesy of Shirley Brooks-Jones
Flags at half-staff in Appleton, Newfoundland, a town about halfway between Gander and Lewisporte.
Photo by Ray LaVoie Photography
wenty years ago, Shirley Brooks-Jones was flying back to the United States from a trip to Belgium when the captain made an announcement – their flight was rerouting because U.S. airspace was closing down immediately. The date was Sept. 11, 2001, and the first plane had just flown into the World Trade Center towers. To keep passengers calm, however, the plane’s captain, Michael Sweeney, told passengers they were landing because of a technical issue with the plane. Brooks-Jones knew something was up the moment they began to descend toward Gander International Airport. “When we landed, it was really strange because of the way the planes were parked – they were parked nose-to-nose,” Brooks-Jones says. “All of the planes from one airline weren’t being docked together, they were parked in the order that they arrive on the tarmac.” The Delta flight, along with 38 other planes, landed in Gander, Newfoundland, an island off the eastern coast of Canada. “Once we got on the ground, (Sweeney) came back on the PA system and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the Shirley Brooks-Jones
