By D’Arcy Morrell –
For most audiences, Come From Away offers a glimpse into an extraordinary story of kindness in the days following September 11th, 2001. But for one audience member who recently visited Barter Theatre, the story unfolding onstage was one she had lived herself.
Following the September 19th performance, Syble Vaughan-Trent graciously stayed for a talkback, sharing with the audience her firsthand account of being one of the nearly 7,000 passengers unexpectedly diverted to Newfoundland on 9/11.
Syble was returning home from a vacation in Ireland when her flight was rerouted to Gander. As the plane approached the airport, she remembers seeing cars lining the road, people watching with binoculars and airplanes everywhere. Then the captain came over the intercom, saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, as I speak, America has been attacked from within.” “You could have heard a pin drop,” Syble recalled. “Nobody said a word.”
Her flight was the last of 38 planes diverted to Gander that day. After spending over 24 hours aboard the aircraft, Syble and her fellow passengers were eventually taken to nearby Lewisporte, where residents had transformed a community center into a temporary home.
There were makeshift beds, hot meals and telephones to call home. Locals brought clothing and toiletries, offered rides and opened their homes. When Syble developed an eye infection after wearing her contacts for too long, she was taken to an ophthalmologist and treated at no charge. “The food, the graciousness, the compassion of those people—it was just unbelievable,” she said. “Anything you wanted, they tried to get it.”
There was laughter, too. There were outings, a cookout and evenings spent getting to know the people around them. Syble remembers sometimes catching herself enjoying those days—and struggling with the complicated feeling that followed. “If it had not been for the circumstances of why we were there, it could have been very enjoyable,” she said.
More than two decades later, sitting in Barter’s Gilliam Stage, Syble watched those remarkable days come to life again. “I love the play,” she told the audience. “It is just like the way it was.”
For Syble, Come From Away was more than a retelling of a historic event. Watching her memories unfold on stage was a return to a place and a group of people she has never forgotten. “You just couldn’t ask for people to be any better than they were,” she said. “I just hope we would do the same if the situation were in reverse.”
