This September marks 25 years since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and Father Dave welcomes Kevin Tuerff to inspire kindness leading up to this anniversary. Kevin is an author, speaker, and founder of the global charity Pay It Forward 9/11, which is dedicated to honoring lives lost and the heroes of this tragedy through random acts of kindness for strangers. His own story of that day is chronicled in the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical “Come From Away.”
Kevin shares that on September 11, 2001, he was aboard an international flight that was diverted when airspace in the United States closed. “About three hours before we’re supposed to land [in New York City], I looked up at the GPS monitor on the ceiling of the airplane, and all of a sudden, I noticed that we were dropping in elevation. Not a great feeling when you’re over the ocean,” he recalls. “We were on an Air France flight, and the captain first came on in French and then switched to broken English and said, ‘Due to a terrorist attack in the United States, we’ll be landing in Gander.’ I didn’t know what country that was…It really didn’t occur to me that it was Newfoundland and a province of Canada, and I soon found out it is one of the best places on the planet.”
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Father Dave explains how “Come From Away” tells the story of what happened next. “The particular planes that landed in Canada and were marooned there didn’t know how long they were going to be there or what was going on,” he says. “It is a very heartwarming testament to the hospitality, not only of the Canadian people, but of human beings to one another — offering love and charity at a time of great distress.”
Kevin adds, “We spent 15 hours on the tarmac, which was not fun. We finally got off the plane and ended up staying at a community college, sleeping on the floor…a town of 9,000 people brought in 7,000 people from 90 different countries. Essentially, I was an American refugee. I got the chance to feel for five days what it’s like to rely on strangers for food, clothing, shelter, and information. When I came back to Texas I wondered, would we do the same?”
Kevin shares how he commemorated the anniversary of the attacks in the early years after. “I borrowed an idea from the movie Pay It Forward, and closed down my office every September 11th. I would hand out $100 bills to teams of two, and they would go out across Austin and spend the money however they wanted on strangers doing good deeds,” he says. “We [told others] we would never forget the tragedy that happened, and so this is how we were honoring those lives by doing these good deeds. Then they would come back to the office and talk about what they did with the money.”
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“People were so creative — from buying a small cup of coffee, to buying a savings bond for a single mother giving birth to a child on 9/11, to paying for somebody’s traffic tickets at the county courthouse,” Kevin continues. “It was so emotional and moving, because people witnessed how treating strangers not only helps the others. It’s like the prayer of Saint Francis; ‘It is in giving that we receive.’ I’ve done it myself for 25 years now.”
As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the attacks, Kevin and Pay Iit Forward 9/11 are inspiring others in a “11 days of Kindness” campaign. “The idea is that anybody can do three good deeds for strangers between September 1st and the 11th,” he says, noting that they also tailor specific content for kids. “For schools we actually have a curriculum, ‘11 days of kindness for kids’…Of course kids need to learn the terrible side of what happened on that dark day, but also see that out of darkness there is light.”
