Adrienne Sanders

asanders@lohud.com

Edward and Marilyn Kaplan dozed comfortably in their first class seats, thoughts floating back to their red carpet weekend in London.

They had met Clive Owen and Helen Mirren, the stars of “Greenfingers,” a romantic comedy the couple had helped finance. In London for the premiere, they stayed in Claridge’s, an art deco luxury hotel in the exclusive Mayfair district.

The couple had found each other eight years earlier in East Hampton at a Shabbat service. Both had been widowed with three children. Now they split their time between Florida and New York City, with frequent visits to their children in Westchester.

Each had a daughter living in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, and other children working there as well. Edward's sister, Cheryl Luwisch, worked downtown in the mayor's office, blocks from the World Trade Center.

About five hours into the Tuesday morning flight, the pilot’s voice came over the intercom. The plane was going to land in 20 minutes, he said.

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He reassured hundreds of passengers on board that there was nothing wrong with the aircraft. He switched on a BBC live broadcast of the Word Trade Center attack as a plane plowed into the second tower,

“We’re going to let you listen to what we’ve been hearing for the last few minutes,” he said.

“I was in shock, absolute shock,” said Marilyn.

She felt panicked, thinking about family members in the city.

With all air traffic halted in the United States, the plane was rerouted to St. John’s, a coastal city of 100,000 on the island of Newfoundland, Canada. The plane soon glided onto the runway, full of bewildered passengers wondering where they were headed.

Locals had already begun collecting blankets and making sandwiches for their arrival.

The plane taxied forward. Edward eyed the wings of another aircraft edging up right alongside his. Twenty-seven planes, many of them jumbo jets, made emergency landings in St. John’s that day, nestled nose-to-tail, wing-to-wing “on a field that clearly couldn’t accommodate these aircrafts under normal circumstances,” Marilyn said.

Some 4,300 passengers and crew members descended upon St. John’s on Sept. 11. Locals called them “plane people” and would spend the next several days dedicating their lives to comforting them.

On Sept. 11, 2001, more than 17,000 international airline passengers on 122 flights found themselves in the Canadian maritime provinces, most of them in Newfoundland and Labrador — spread among cities including Deer Lake, Stephenville, Goose Bay and Gander, NorthJersey.com reported. The rocky island of Newfoundland was home to about 500,000 people — roughly half of Westchester’s population at the time in about 300 times the amount of space.

“Thousands of people were dropped from the sky as unexpected guests,” Marilyn said from the Armonk living room of her step-daughter, Suzanne Schneider.

"And they were extraordinarily gracious to us," Edward added.

Strangers in a friendly land

The passengers on Delta sat on the tarmac waiting for further instructions. Afternoon pressed into evening. Eight hours passed.

“We eventually ran out of peanuts, ice cream… There was no more toilet paper left,” Edward said.

He watched the movie “Shrek” on a repeating loop while trying to call relatives in New York. A few hours later, he reached his father in Florida who promised to send word to their children that he and Marilyn were unharmed. His father didn't yet know how the children were.

The passengers didn’t know it at the time but, due to the confusion following the hijackings, authorities considered them possible terrorists.

When they were allowed to disembark, men could bring only what was in their pockets. Women were allowed to carry with them only very small purses. Medication, toiletries and other personal items were left behind.

As soon as word spread that flights were being diverted their way, St. John’s Mayor Dennis O’Keefe said, “All of the agencies — the Salvation Army, the provincial government and the private sector — mobilized in terms of providing food and basic necessities like blankets and toothpaste, the usual things we need in our everyday lives.”

When the hungry and tired passengers disembarked, they were met by townspeople who had made mountains of hand-wrapped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and provided doughnuts, apples and oranges. The Kaplans were escorted to a frigid ice-skating rink, Mile One Stadium, where the Montreal Canadiens practice. The Red Cross brought them blankets.

The stadium's new scoreboard played first CBC, then CNN news coverage as passengers walked in and were seated. There were gasps as the images from New York filled the screen.

As the evening went on, hundreds of locals arrived at the stadium to offer help — accommodations, assistance, whatever they could do,” Rob Antle wrote in the local newspaper, The Telegram.

The oldest among them were taken to local hotels. Some locals brought families to their homes against official orders.

High school opens its heart

“We had been hearing news reports of something terrible going on. There were lots of rumors,” said Robert Pittman, then principal of St. John’s Holy Heart of Mary Regional High School, a large public school on the city’s East End.

He soon learned more details of the attacks.

“Around lunchtime, I got the telephone call,” he said.

School district officials told Pittman his school would be needed as an emergency shelter for the “plane people.”

He sent the school’s 1,500 students home and planned with his staff of 67 for the visitors' arrival.

Buses shuttled in throughout the afternoon and evening. The Kaplans were on one of them.

Teachers welcomed the dazed passengers as supplies and bedding arrived from emergency services, Pittman said. He gathered his staff and drew up a schedule on a blackboard, assigning each of them shifts so the school would be supervised around the clock.

“We stayed in Room 203, where they taught English as a second language,” Marilyn recalled.

“The sleeping accommodations were not quite as luxurious as they had been in London,” Edward quipped. “But we were grateful to have what they were able to provide for us.”

The next morning, teachers directed them to the cafeteria, where staff had prepared them all a hot breakfast. While the Kaplans enjoyed eggs and oatmeal, several passengers declined food from the buffet. Soon Pittman realized they were Orthodox Jews who only ate kosher fare. Quickly he had kosher meals delivered for the duration of their stay.

“It was just incredible, the response of the townspeople to our personal needs — to our needs as a group and to each of us personally. It was just extraordinary,” Marilyn said.

Some 300 students and family members volunteered help at the school, setting up a makeshift beauty salon and pharmacy that dispensed medicine provided by Wal-Mart. The student choir eased the pain of watching endless hours of live coverage of the attacks’ aftermath.

On Wednesday, teachers showed Edward to the school's computer room, where he was able to send email. He finally reached his daughter Sondra, who told him all of their family members were fine.

Edward pulled aside a school official to ask whether the city had a Hertz car rental office. A retired tax attorney and co-founder of a mid-sized Wall Street accounting firm, he wanted to drive home from Canada.

“He had a big broad smile and said, ‘We do have Hertz here, and Avis too, but you’re on an island. You’d have to drive to the ferry, ride to the mainland and then travel 1,500 miles to New York.' ”

And besides, Edward recalled, “He said, ‘Your country is closed. North America is closed. So make yourself comfortable and we’ll do the best we can.’ ”

Newfoundland’s hardscrabble character

O’Keefe said the locals’ generosity and genuine sympathy to those in need stems from centuries of island-bound isolation.

“We have had 500 years of living and working together in order to build an exciting, economically prosperous province. Now it’s just part of our make-up. We are there for ourselves and there for others,” he said.

“People are incredibly kind everywhere,” Pittman said. “They will support you when they see someone in need. If it would have been New York, it would have been the same.”

Returning home

On Thursday, school officials gave the Kaplans permission to leave the school to walk through the city. Charmed by the candy-colored homes and shops along St. John’s Harbor, the couple bought clothing to replace what they had been wearing for three days.

On Friday, the Kaplans and their fellow passengers said goodbye to their kind hosts. While still in the air, passengers organized a scholarship fund for Holy Heart.

“It was used to create a new center for physical education. There is a sign letting everyone know that the place (was) donated by the passengers,” Pittman said.

The Kaplans sent $1,000.

Edward’s daughter, Jackie Kay, an Ardsley resident, said she and her siblings were happy that her parents had such a positive experience in St. John’s, but they didn’t discuss it much at the time because “it seemed disrespectful to take attention away from all the victims and bad experiences that friends were having,”

The Kaplans never returned to Europe. They stopped flying overseas for many years, now making their only trips abroad to Israel, where rigorous airport security checks and a visible military presence makes them feel safe.

And “Greenfingers,” the movie that had lured them to London 15 years ago, fizzled at the box office.

Said Marilyn, “People were too scared to sit in movie theaters after September 11th.”

Twitter: @ASKSanders