Tragedy Affects Many Lives in Myriad Ways

Lee Hudson, a legally blind snack bar vendor from Oklahoma City, has been on a waiting list for a kidney transplant for 14 months. This week, his wait appeared to be over.

On Monday night, Hudson, 49, received word that there was a “perfectly matched” kidney that would be ready for him the next day. The kidney, from a donor in Portland, Ore., matched all six of Hudson’s genetic markers. And, like Hudson, the donor was a mountain of a man: 6 feet 5 and 300 pounds.

Buoyed by the news, Hudson checked into St. Anthony’s Hospital in Oklahoma City on Tuesday and prepared for his transplant. Then came the bad news.

“They told me that because air traffic had been shut down across the United States, they couldn’t get the kidney out of Oregon,” he said.

The kidney went to another man in Portland.

“I came within a breath of receiving it,” Hudson said.

As airplanes across the nation headed for airports Tuesday, one Southwest Airlines pilot was forced to land in Moline, Ill., 150 miles from Chicago. Once there, he went beyond the call of duty, looking after his crew and passengers long after they left his plane.

First, the pilot arranged for his crew and passengers to stay at a hotel. He made sure everyone got accommodations. Then he escorted one boy to his room, phoned his parents and stuck around for a game of Nintendo.

As if that weren’t enough, the captain of the Southwest jet gathered the crew and passengers and took the whole bunch for a night out.

“Our flight operations [department] was trying to get in touch with all the pilots, and the lady at the hotel in Moline told us: ‘I’m sorry, he took everyone to the movies,’ ” said Whitney Brewer, a Southwest spokeswoman.

For millions of Americans, news of Tuesday’s attacks triggered fears for a loved one. For Kelly Giblin, a housewife in Kensington, Md., it threatened two.

Her brother works in southern Manhattan, near the World Trade Center. Her husband’s office sits in the middle of Washington, near the Capitol.

Early Tuesday, Giblin tracked down the wife of her brother, Bernard Clark. Clark, she learned from her sister-in-law, had fled his office and was trying to make his way home. He had escaped the fall of the first tower but had told his wife, “If the second tower goes down, I’m in trouble.”

When the second tower fell, Giblin could only wait, increasingly apprehensive.

Then, with her brother still missing, news reports broadcast the attack on the Pentagon and rumors circulated of unaccounted-for planes still aloft. Giblin tried to call her husband, 37-year-old Thomas Giblin, a Labor Department lawyer.

She got no answer.

“I thought, ‘This is it; here’s our family tragedy,’ ” she said.

Giblin spent an hour consumed in worry before the news turned good. Shortly after 11, her sister-in-law called to report that Clark was hurt, but alive, walking uptown in Manhattan.

Thirty minutes later, Giblin heard from her husband. He was calling from the Silver Spring, Md., subway stop, in need of a ride home. In the rush of the office evacuation, he had left his car keys in his desk drawer.

More than 60 firefighters and civilians from Orange County sat in an aircraft hangar at a secret location Wednesday, watching television news as they awaited orders to join crews searching for survivors in New York or Washington. Some said they were nervous about what they would find once they landed. But they were also eager to end their wait and start helping pull people from the wreckage.

“They told us that it’s not a matter of if we’re going, but when we’re going,” said Anaheim Fire Capt. John Strickland. “We just hope we get there in time to pull out live people.”

Strickland said he spent much of Wednesday phoning his wife and trying to calm his two boys, 8 and 10. He said he told his older to be strong while he was away.

“He’s concerned because he’s seen the news and the firefighters who have died or are presumed missing,” Strickland said. “But I’ve assured him that to the best of our knowledge, the worst is over. He knows he’s got to be strong and take care of [his] mom and little brother when I’m gone. And he’s prepared to do that.”

All across the country, officials from several airlines said stranded crews and passengers did their best to deal with the inconvenience of being grounded hundreds of miles from home. Some wound up at military bases, others in such places as Garden City, Kan.

In Moline, passengers, pilots and flight attendants from six flights flooded hotels near the Quad-City International Airport. Six planes diverted from their original destinations sat empty on the tarmac Wednesday.

Two of the airlines--Southwest and United--do not offer service from Moline, said Mike Haney, director of airport operations.

As a result, accommodations for passengers and crew were left to individual captains, airline officials said. If captains wanted to help, they could.

“We don’t have standard operating procedures for this,” said Brandy King, a Southwest Airlines spokeswoman in Dallas. “It’s really been amazing how everyone’s pulled together.”

In some cases, flight attendants offered to use their personal credit cards to pay for passengers’ hotel rooms, according to Southwest spokeswomen. In other cities, flight attendants phoned stranded colleagues to offer them a room in their house.

In Moline, crew members and passengers filled the Holiday Inn Express. Passenger George Cain of Tampa, Fla., planned to spend Wednesday afternoon at the hotel.

“There’s about four hotels, a McDonald’s and a truck stop,” Cain said, underestimating the city just a bit. “We’re going to play putt-putt golf . . . and just wait.”

Sirens never seemed to cease in Manhattan on Wednesday, but the hospitals didn’t fill up. Instead, half-empty operating rooms signaled the enormity of what had struck the city.

“We didn’t end up with the numbers we expected, because people didn’t survive,” said Dr. Leonard Bakalchuk, an emergency room physician at St. Vincent’s Hospital, the primary triage center closest to the disaster site.

“We would like to be overwhelmed with survivors. We’re going to stay in this mode until there’s no hope.”

Southern California churches have seen huge crowds in the past 48 hours.

More than 5,000 people attended services at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest on Tuesday night. Spanish- and English-speaking congregations in Simi Valley rallied together the same day for a bilingual service. In Pasadena on Wednesday night, a massive 50-church ecumenical service was held on the steps of City Hall.

Leaving one service in Garden Grove, retired teacher Mim Krisher reflected on the events of Tuesday.

“Being Christians, we believe that God directs our lives,” she said. “Everything happens for a purpose. In everything that happens, there’s a blessing there if you look hard enough.”

She paused.

“I’m not sure where the blessings in this are,” she said.