‘Come From Away’ coming to Scranton

Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.

On Sept. 11, 2001 Kevin Tuerff and his then-partner, also named Kevin, were returning to the United States after a Paris vacation.

“I could see we were a couple hours from New York,” recalled Tuerff, who had been watching a monitor with a GPS map on the airplane ceiling. “Then suddenly we were descending. That’s not a good thing when you’re over the ocean. There was a sharp bank to the right and it looked like we were going to the North Pole.”

“Then the (Air France) pilot made an announcement in French. The only word in English was ‘terrorism.’ “

Soon Tuerff’s flight was one of 38 that, diverted from the United States because of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, landed in the remote town of Gander, Newfoundland.

Stranded there for the next five days, the nearly 7,000 passengers were embraced by the local residents, who cooked for them, offered clean clothes, and put them up in schools, community centers and even private homes.

You’ll learn more about their true story if you see the touring musical “Come From Away,” which Broadway in Scranton is bringing to the Scranton Cultural Center for four shows April 5 – April 7.

“We were staying at a community college and at midnight a young man, a teenager, came in with an air mattress and two pillows. I was ready to break down and cry,” said Tuerff, remembering how grateful he was for a place to lay his head during the ordeal.

Tuerff, who was one of many passengers interviewed by the musical’s creative team, also remembers how the community college’s culinary students prepared a meal of stuffed chicken breast, “better than anything we’d had in France,” for 250 people.

Inspired by the kindness of the citizens of Gander, Tuerff established “Pay It Forward 911,” a program that encourages people to perform acts of kindness for strangers. He started by giving the 40 employees who worked at a company he owned in Austin, Texas, the day off on the first anniversary — Sept. 11, 2002 — so they could go out in pairs, armed with $100, and perform good deeds.

Among the most memorable, he said, a school principal shared the story of two children who had to walk 45 minutes to school because their bicycles had been stolen. A Pay It Forward team bought two new bicycles at Target and “it was an amazing feeling” to help those kids, Tuerff said.

Pay It Forward 911 has grown into an international effort, with people in 46 states and 16 countries taking part, and it covers “11 days of kindness,” from Sept. 1 through Sept. 11 each year.

Tuerff wants even more people to share that “amazing feeling” of helping strangers. “Some people say they’ll help people in their neighborhood or their church. They don’t see a need to help ‘other’ people,” he said, noting he’d like to “break down the silos” of isolation and see people reaching out without regard to political beliefs, sexual orientation or other possible lines of division.

When flights were finally able to resume in 2001, Tuerff and his partner returned to France, because that was where the Air France plane had to go. “I went into Notre Dame and people were praying for the United States,” he said. “I wondered if we (in the United States) would do that.”

In the French cathedral people sang a song he knew, “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace,” and he adopted that as a motto in the aftermath of 9/11, eventually using the phrase “Channel of Peace” in the title of the book he wrote about the experience.

His character in “Come From Away” sings a song thatbecomes a prayer for peace, using several languages, and that’s Tuerff’s favorite part of the production..

Show times at the Scranton Cultural Center are 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 5; 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 6, and 1 p.m. Sunday, April 7.