Sorry, old story. MSNBC documentary on the airliners

diverted on 9/11 called Operation Yellow Ribbon. Gander, Newfoundland, a town of 10,000 made a home for more than 6,000 Americans and other people. The school bus drivers, who were on strike, came in on mininimal notice and worked through the emergency without pay, first transporting the people from the airport into town, and then ferrying people around town. The stores opened up and if the passengers were out of money, they were given the items (mostly clothes, underwear, something to sleep in). A lot of people needed medications because checked baggage remained on the planes, so the pharmacies dispensed medications without charge (that's what Tom Brokaw said in this doc). People opened their homes and took in families, one couple buying clothes were offered a home and showers by the store clerk.

Newfoundlanders are incredibly generous, gregarious, funny people. They are the classic salt of the earth. Newfoundland, when it's sunny is incredibly beautiful rocky and heavily treed with the Atlantic ocean around it (that's not entirely correct but it is an island) with rugged near mountainous terrain and what are effectively fjords and inlets all around the periphery.

It used to be a place dependent on fishing and logging, but it has been fished out (by European trawlers) and once you've logged an area out completely, it takes a long time to re-grow. None the less, the people are astonishing in their genuineness and willingness to reach out.

It's a wonderful story. And the people that were helped set up a scholarship for graduates of the local high school that approaches a million dollars now.

Rob