Jim and Betty Felder in Venice in Sept. 2001Most Americans will never forget where they were around 9:00 a.m. on September 11, 2001 when the first of two airliners slammed into the side of one of the twin towers at the World Trade Center in New York City. Nor will they ever forget how the event first came to their attention and the hours they spent thereafter watching the real-life horror story unfold. Jim and Betty Felder of Yellow Springs were just six days into a three-week long vacation in Europe, in the town of Ulm, Germany, birthplace of Albert Einstein, when an Australian woman on their tour received a cell phone call from her daughter.
Ashen-faced, she approached Jim Felder, whom she knew to be one of the handful of Americans in their party of mostly Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians. "Jim, New York´s on fire!" she said.
Felder couldn´t picture that, he said in a recent interview. One of a couple of female school teachers traveling alone from Massachusetts asked, "Jim, what are we going to do." Felder, not realizing the full extent of the tragedy, made light of the situation to calm the woman. But as the cacophony of cell phone rings grew, the reality began to set in.
What was there to do..? They were a world away from home, information was sparse and they were aboard a boat traveling down the Rhine. All there was to do was to make the best of it and get more information when they could. The mountains and the false front castles, built by the Nazis in WWII so the allies wouldn´t bomb their railroad tunnels were so spectacular that it was easy to shove the shocking news to the side.
They rejoined their bus after the river tour and passed through the Dolomites into Italy, where they stopped at a chalet for lunch. The owner rushed out to greet them as the bus pulled up to the front of the building. He knew there would be Americans in the tour. He offered his sympathy as they disembarked from the bus.
"We are all Americans," he told them.
That night, when they arrived at their hotel in Sorrento, they had their first chance to find out the scope of the horror that had befallen their country. A crowd was gathered around a television in the lobby that was tuned to CNN. All the pay phones had long lines.
On the hotel bulletin board was a letter from the Mayor of Rome. It began: "Let me first of all express to you, in this day of sorrow, my heart-felt sympathy and that of the city of Rome for a tragedy that has struck the heart of the U.S.A. One of the oldest and strongest democracies has been violated, a most painful wound in American history has been inflicted, a history that was often interwoven with that of Europe and of our country. We reject this dreadful violence…" He went on to tell the Americans that they could consider Rome as their home and promised them a safe haven.
Every night, for the rest of the trip, they would turn on CNN as soon as they got to their hotel room. They would leave it on all night. They were concerned for their family, one of whom flew regularly as a part of her job with an airline, another who lived just a few blocks from ground zero. On CNN they were warning Americans abroad to keep a low profile. They considered cutting their trip short, but there were problems with that.
"Nothing was flying to the U.S. for the next four days," Betty Felder said. "We felt so isolated."
By the time the no-fly period was over, they had confirmed by telephone that everyone in their family had been accounted for. They decided to finish the trip. But there was a decidedly different flavor to it.
"The Australians stopped teasing us about Bush," Jim Felder recalled.
"It was like a page had been turned," Betty said. "Wherever we went, when they found out we were Americans, we were treated with kindness."
As the trip began to wind down, they became concerned about how they would get home. In Amsterdam, Jim decided to call their airline to be sure they were still booked on their flight from Paris to Detroit. The phone booth posed a problem. Unable to deal with the payphone, he asked for help from a man in the booth next to his.
"The guy turned out to be a Texan," Felder laughed. "He was glad to help a fellow American."
When they got to Charles DeGaulle Airport in Paris, they were greeted by a scene from a suspense thriller.
"There were French Soldiers with dogs everywhere," Betty said. "They had automatic weapons slung over their shoulders."
As luck would have it, the KLM counter was situated between two Arab airlines. Jim was nervous. It appeared that the only other Americans in line were a couple from Minnesota. It seemed to Felder that the rest of the passengers on the almost empty flight to Detroit were Muslims. The fact that the baggage screeners were paying little attention to what they were doing added to Felder´s paranoia. By the time they made it back to the safety and comfort of their home in Yellow Springs, it was late at night. Catching up with relatives would have to wait until morning.
Going through the photos of their trip and reminiscing about the wonderful sights and the caring people they met on the trip, Betty Felder recalled the emotion of crossing the English Channel by boat, leaving the white cliffs of Dover and approaching the beaches and cliffs of France. At the time, she said, she thought about the Americans who sacrificed their lives for our country during the D-day invasion.
"We are all Americans," she recalled the Italian chalet owner saying. Then she talked about the political divisions at home and how they are keeping us from having health care for every American, how modern day wounded veterans are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to a country that is not providing them with adequate medical care.
"We give lip-service to so much and do so little," she said. "We dishonor the sacrifice of those men on the beaches of Normandy."
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