Gander the star of U.K. 9/11 radio drama
Last Updated: Wednesday, July 2, 2008 | 5:14 PM NT
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A radio play about the kindness of residents of Gander, N.L., who sheltered air passengers stranded by the Sept. 11 attacks has had its debut on British radio.
The play, written by Britons David Stafford and his wife Caroline, was recently broadcast on BBC Radio 4, a British station devoted to talk shows and radio drama.
Stafford, host of the popular show Home Truths which features true life stories, said that a true story told by a British woman of a Gander family's hospitality during the crisis inspired them to write the romantic comedy.
"It's one of those stories that just touches your heart. While all these terrible things are going on in New York, this kindness — I mean great acts of kindness — [is] going on," Stafford told CBC News.
About 6,500 people suddenly found themselves stranded at the Gander airport when planes were no longer allowed into U.S. airspace after the 9/11 attacks. Thirty-nine planes had to stop over in the town, which was a major air base during the Second World War.
With too few hotel rooms to house passengers, hundreds of Gander residents took complete strangers, many of them British, into their homes.
"I always feel that in newspapers — well, everywhere, really — the stories that get told are the bad stories, the stories of bad things happening," Stafford said. "It just seems important, very important, to tell stories about good things that are happening, about genuine acts of kindness."
Stafford and his wife wrote The Day the Planes Came, about a squabbling mother and daughter who befriend a business traveller on their flight, and what happens when a man in Gander takes them all into his home.
The mother is seduced by Gander hospitality and eventually lets her hair down, catching a fish, dabbling in karaoke and finally getting the few hours of sleep that have eluded her for so long.
A reviewer in the Guardian the "immensely enjoyable " radio drama outlined "many beautifully observed details about their different lives."
The humorous scenes include a teen's introduction to screech — the Jamaican rum that is a tradition in Newfoundland and Labrador — and a British passenger's surprise at the notion that bears live in the nearby bush.
The Guardian said it may be the first romantic comedy to emerge out of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Staffords said they are considering turning their play into a film script.
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