Welcome to the Kindness Chronicles, where we hope to inject the world with a dose of the Minnesota nice that it desperately needs. We're creeping up on the, would it be the 23rd anniversary of the 9 11 attacks. And, uh, there's a really neat story that I wanted to talk about, uh, related to the 9 11 story day that was, uh, that was filled with lots of, awful stories. There was a really sweet story that took place up in a place called Gander, Newfoundland up in Canada, KG, where were you on 9 11?
Do you recall? Yeah, I do. I, uh, I was working at Irondale High School. So, um, on 9 11, I, um, I had just secured the doors to the building and the parking lot. I worked in in school suspension, but I also helped out securing the parking lot and to be clear, You worked in in school suspension. You weren't on in school suspension. No, I was like a supervisor. Okay. You okay. Yeah. At the time I needed to be out the door and ready to go coach during the hockey season. by 2 or 2. 15.
That was the women's coach at St. Thomas. Yes. And coaching the college hockey team. And so I had to find a gig where I could be done early. Yep. High school was perfect. I worked at both Mountain View and Irondale, but on 9 11, I was working at Irondale and I was John Bazzachini had sent me, uh, maybe a three, four blocks away to get, uh, some of the guys, some coffee and, uh, and a breakfast sandwich, which we love a breakfast sandwich. I do specifically.
So anyway, I'm going to get the guys, their stuff, and I'm listening to Tom Bernard on the, uh, KQ morning, on my way out to get the breakfast sandwich and the coffee, I hear them basically saying, my goodness, a small commuter plane has hit the world trade center. We're going to try to follow up on what's happening. And so I'm like, well, that's really like, that's strange. So then I get to get, you know, the stuff. And I'm heading back to Irondale.
So now it's probably, I don't know, maybe 20 minutes later. And as I'm driving back, the second plane hit the towers and Bob Sansevier, Bob Sansevier says it's terrorism. He immediately right away. Yeah. I was freaking out. In fact, that nine 11 on KQ, you can find it on YouTube.
The whole, nine 11 show is on, uh, is on YouTube and it's fascinating because, they immediately knew, as most people did, after the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center, the response was, this is a little fishy, this, uh, this is sketch. Right. and then the second plane hit. I happened to be, believe this or not, I was on a treadmill, Gold's Gym, in, uh, White Bear Lake, Which is now a CVS pharmacy, but I was in the Gold's Gym.
Very rare appearance in the gym, especially on a treadmill. And I was watching the CBS morning show with Brian Gumbel and uh, looking back, his, his assessment to the situation was not quite as good as Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw on NBC, but man, what a, what a deal. That was.
It and I vividly remember the atmosphere in that high school the rest of the day, because as a country now, besides shutting down all the flights and making sure they get down out of the ground, like schools and areas near big buildings were like, I don't want to call it panic mode, but they were certainly taking precautions. And so everything got canceled, all the after school activities, all that stuff.
Was shut down and then they started, the school administration started figuring out a way to get everybody home, um, expeditiously and safely early in the afternoon. I'll never forget it, John, because you know, at that time now we know now 23 years later that it was, you know, just those claims that were involved and you know, the ones that hit.
Uh, including the two in New York, the one in, in Washington, the one that the, uh, passengers saved from any more trouble by taking the plane down and taking over, uh, from the, uh, from the, uh, terrorists. But we didn't know at that time. So around, you know, even Minnesota here in the cornfields, we were still looking over our shoulder, looking up to the sky. I vividly remember seeing military planes that day in the sky flying by. And it was. We were all on alert. I'll never forget it.
Yeah. I knew a guy that worked at IDS at the IDS center. And, uh, I immediately was like, God, I wonder if he's going to get out. And they did, they evacuated the IDS center. They evacuated the, uh, the world trade center is what, as it was called in St. Paul, it's now the Wells Fargo. Building only a 30 story building, but, uh, yeah, I mean, you just didn't know how far this was going to go. It was nuts, but man, it was scary.
You mentioned the, uh, the bringing the planes, uh, bringing the planes down. In other words, I read somewhere there was something like 4, 500 planes in the sky at the time the folks at, Air traffic control. You know, what's crazy is the guy that was in charge of air traffic control for the whole country. That was his first day of work. Do you, are you aware of that? Yeah. Yeah. I've watched some documentaries. It was his first day as the chief of the United States air traffic control.
So he made the call to bring all these planes down. And the story that I want to talk about is, there was a small town in Newfoundland I forgot the name of the town, anyways, a small town in Newfoundland was the farthest east, airport in North America. In fact, in the 1940s, it was the largest airport in North America because of all of the military flights that were flying in and out of there, but it was in this, this small little town.
And they brought in, there were 37 or 38 planes that ended up flying into this airport. And it was like the whole city, rallied around the fact that we're gonna have to, to serve as hosts for, you know, these 37 planes worth of people. And the stories are just incredible. Well, think about that small town and do the math. Let's just say each plane averaged a couple hundred passengers. And We have roughly 40 planes.
That's, that's 8, 000 people in a pretty small area that you're going to try to take care of in a very traumatic situation. That had to be fascinating. It more than doubled their population, uh, when those planes, uh, when those planes landed. And they talked about the fact the mayor, I saw the mayor interviewed on a, uh, 60 Minutes Australia program. And on that program, the, uh, the mayor talked about the fact that he turned the ice rink.
into like the largest refrigeration system, uh, in, in, probably in history. Because they had all this food that they needed to, uh, to feed these folks with, and they needed refrigeration for a lot of it, and sure enough, they found it. And guess who just came in? Johnny Clueless, welcome, Steve Brown. Hey, gentlemen. Hi. Sorry I'm late. You're not late. We're surprised that you made it. No, you're right on time. Can I jump in? What are you guys talking about?
Yeah, we're talking about 9 11. 9 11. Okay, based on Where were you on 9 11, Steve? I was actually Folding clothes in my living room. I was working for my dad's company, roofing company. I was about to go look at a roof in Stillwater and I was folding clothes, watching the today's show. Saw it happen. So I saw some kind of thing happen and they were kept going back. Matt Lauer was on and he was interviewing a guy who wrote a book on Howard Hughes. Yeah. Cause I quickly switched.
I was telling KG that I was at the gym. What a surprise. That doesn't happen often. Nice. But the minute I got home. Um, I happen to be taping the Today Show. What? Because there was something on that day that I wanted to see, like, Wow, that's very telling. I don't know why I was taping it. I just, I got, Wow. It's very odd.
So yeah, I was watching it happen live and, and, then I went out, I was talking with a guy, I was on a roof, you know, measuring up the roof and talking about it, like, that's kind of weird, huh? Something weird going on there. What's, what's happened? So, I mean, then I came home. Yeah, 903, the second plane hit. Holy smokes. But yeah. Horrible. Horrible time. Are you aware of the, uh, the planes that landed in Newfoundland? In Canada. There were, uh, 37 planes.
That, that flew into this airport, and actually there's a Broadway play, uh, I think it's called Come From Away that, uh, that's based on that, uh, that story. No, I don't know, did you already tell the story? Briefly, yeah. Okay. You're not missing anything. I'll, so 9 11, we did a little state fair talk. Do you want to, do you have anything to add? Did you go to the state fair? I did not go. And, uh, you didn't miss, uh, here's my question. Yeah. Every year we break records every year.
It was insane. But my question is, are they adding more trash cans and bathrooms every year? I would say the, the upkeep of the fair is pretty remarkable. Is it good? It's pretty darn good. I remember in the past, you know, I haven't been there for years, but I always had to go early, because it's still kind of clean, and you can get food. And then as it gets to the last day, it's just crazy. Not that they don't keep it up, but it just gets to be messed up. Yeah, KG and I, uh, Did you guys go?
We, yeah, we were there. Uh, we went to one of the restrooms, uh, Uh, let's just say was, uh, was not ready for prime time. Right. It'll happen. It's a lot of people. It's a lot of, you know, cheese curds. There's a lot of cheese curds. A lot of beer. Yeah, it's a bad, bad, bad combination. Well, I'm glad you, uh, did you enjoy yourselves. You guys did. Yeah, I was, yeah, you'll have to listen to the podcast. I will, I'll check it out. I'm glad I, I'm glad I jumped in here.
Well, kg I know that you've got a, uh, a dinner engagement. Um, Steve and I are actually going, yeah, before we go, I, oh, yeah. I gotta circle back real quick to nine 11. I, I, yeah. I just wanna share two things. Um, you know, it was, it was hard to watch a lot of it. I watched all of it. I think like a lot of Americans, we were in shock that this could actually happen. But there was a lot of inspiration that came out of this.
I mean, a lot of the way that all the stories were, you had firefighters from all over the country drive to New York to help out. That was inspirational. And then I got to tell you two things George Bush did. Number one, um, might've been the night of or the next morning when he showed up to see the damage and they were still digging bodies out of there. And he had that megaphone and somebody said, Hey, can you hear us over here? And he grabbed that megaphone. He said, I can hear you.
Uh, we all can hear you. And in the next, in the, in the coming days, the people who did this to us are going to hear from all of us. And I mean, the hair on my neck stood up when he said that, like the country had come together. We're so divisive right now. with where we are in politics. But back then on 9 11, it was one of the real silver linings is we were all red, white and blue.
And then later, I think 10 12 days later when sports finally came back and the Yankees had their very first home game and he threw out the first pitch. I will tell you right now, if you go to youtube and you watch that entire, it's probably 12 minutes Of him, um, taking the mound in front of that crowd of Yankees game and throwing that perfect strike.
If that doesn't excite you and make you feel good about being an American and our president, I don't know who we are because that is unbelievably cool. And what was cool about that first pitch, he threw from the mound, not from in front of it. And he threw a laser strike. It was so damn cool. Like I think about it, it makes me smile every time. Like we, we really came together as a country. And it sucked. Like the whole thing was awful. And it's always going to be an awful scenario.
But what came out of that, you know, I think there was a commercial that aired. In the, in the months after 9 11 that talked about how the terrorists tried to take America down and bring and really pull America apart. And it said, unfortunately, for the terrorists, it did just the opposite. And then the video in this commercial showed these little towns throughout All over the country and every single house, every single place of business had an American flag sitting out there on the front.
And again, it just galvanized everybody. Uh, it, it ended up being a remarkable time. And I, you know, we lived through it. You know, we talked to some people like our, our grandparents or our parents about what it was like to live right after or live through. Pearl Harbor. And I guess this was our Pearl Harbor and boy, um, did our country come together and rise up?
Well, and you know, you, you would hate to, to, to, to cheer for another nine 11 event, but the world could use a, uh, I should say America could use something to bring people together. In fact, you remember in the evening of nine 11, all of Congress got on the steps of the Capitol and just impromptu saying, God bless America. And I mean, it was Democrats, Republicans, arm and arm. It was jaw dropping.
And the idea was, yeah, it might not take a tragedy, but it's going to take something monumental because the only other time in my life that I can remember everybody being kind of on the same page and galvanized. Honestly, and I, I hate to bring it back to sports, but the gold medal, 1980, honestly, that, that was one of those moments in time where the country had really been in a bad place in the month leading up to that Olympics. It was a bad, bad time in our history.
And those kids, that hockey team. Kind of shifted the whole thing Before we go the last last thing i'm going to say is I just went and saw The movie reagan the other night with dennis quaid and that kind of ties into what came after Yeah, uh that rough period of time in our country and you know, I I don't care what you're you know, democrat republican, whatever Reagan the movie is an outstanding two hours and 15 minutes of your time well spent. Go see it.
Well, just the fact that Reagan and Tip O'Neill, who couldn't be more distant as far as their political thought process was concerned, you know, we're just Dear friends with each other and you know, I believe Tip O'Neill came to Reagan's hospital when After Reagan had been shot and asked Reagan if you would play pray with them or something like that He did cool. Was that in the movie? We need more of that Yeah, it was and and we do need as we get closer and closer to To the election.
We do need to remind ourselves of some of that stuff and I hope I mean, I honestly, I'm so sick and tired of, and I have to be on social media for both my jobs. It's part of the gig when you work in sports, all the breaking news is right there, but the political stuff, I, I just scroll right through it. I won't read it. I won't watch it. It's both sides attacking the other. That's all it is. I would much prefer a political environment where we talk about the good we're going to do.
Rather than the bad that the opposition is or will be a part of. I just, I tune out right away, guys. Well, we're going to have the mayor from Duluth on, uh, in a couple of weeks. And, uh, we're going to address just that one last thing, and then we'll let you go. How often, when you go onto YouTube, does Kamala or Barack talk about the fact that we got a fundraising deadline? Fastly Approaching. It's been Fastly Approaching for two months. Let's go now.
I just went to YouTube this afternoon and one of those ads absolutely Oh, actually it was when you sent me the link to the video of the planes being shifted to Newfoundland and that came up before I could watch my My video. And then, you know, I'll count down to when you can hit skip and then I just hit skip. Oh yeah. You had five seconds to, uh, to paradise. All right. KG. Nice chatting with you and, uh, Steve, we got another show here. Yeah, we're going to tape and off we go.