Delta Flight 15 takes off from Frankfurt at dawn. On board: 218 passengers. Families. Business travelers. A pregnant woman. Shirley Brooks-Jones, 65 years old, heading home to Columbus, Ohio. Five hours into the flight, a note reaches the cockpit. All U.S. airspace is closed. Land immediately. The captain says nothing about why. He tells passengers it's a minor instrument problem. Privately, the crew already knows about the World Trade Center. Gander International Airport. Newfoundland, Canada. Midday. The plane touches down 400 miles off its route. Out the window, passengers count 38 other jumbo jets already parked on the tarmac. By nightfall, 53 international flights sit grounded here. Nearly 6,600 people are stuck, with nowhere to go. Nobody is allowed off. For 28 hours, 218 people sit inside that plane. No real answers. No word on what's happening back home. Here's what makes it worse: most of them don't yet know if their own families are safe. Word finally spreads through the cabin. Two hijacked planes. The towers. The Pentagon. A field in Pennsylvania. The plane goes silent. Gander. Day two. Passengers finally step off the aircraft. They're bused 45 kilometers to a town called Lewisporte. Population: just over 3,300 people. Lewisporte has no idea 218 strangers are about to double its guest capacity overnight. It doesn't matter. The mayor puts out one call for bedding and food. The whole town answers. Schools close. Churches open. The Lions Club clears its hall and sets up cots by hand. High schoolers skip class to serve meals and translate for confused travelers. The pregnant passenger is placed in a home across the street from urgent care. Elderly passengers are welcomed into private houses, not shelters. Phone lines are opened for free, unlimited, day and night. When passengers try to pay shopkeepers back, the answer is always no. Nobody in Lewisporte will take a dollar. Local volunteers even bring out screech, the region's famous rum, and host a mock "screeching-in" ceremony to make the exhausted travelers laugh. For three days, this town of fishermen and loggers cares for people it has never met and will likely never see again. Brooks-Jones later calls it something simple. She says: "the most beautiful experience I have ever had in my life." Gander Airport. Three days later. Departure. Flight 15 is finally cleared to fly home. Before takeoff, Brooks-Jones asks the captain for one thing: permission to speak on the intercom. He hands her the microphone. She reminds everyone what Lewisporte just did for them. Then she asks for something back. Pledge sheets start moving up the aisle. Business travelers write checks. Strangers pass around pens. By the time wheels touch down in Atlanta, passengers have pledged $15,000. Brooks-Jones doesn't stop there. Back in Columbus, she calls the Columbus Foundation. An anonymous donor hears the story and matches it instantly, doubling it to $30,000. In 2002, the fund gets a name: the Lewisporte Area Flight 15 Scholarship Fund. It's built for one purpose. Send local kids to college. More than two decades later. The fund is still active. It has sent more than 300 students from the Lewisporte area to college and trade school. Doctors. Nurses. Engineers. Teachers. Some of them weren't born yet when Flight 15 landed. Brooks-Jones has flown back to Newfoundland more than two dozen times since 2001. She still shows up for graduation ceremonies. The friendships that started on cots in a high school gym are still going, more than 20 years on. Most people who know this story didn't hear it from a history book. They heard it from a Broadway stage. Lewisporte and Gander's kindness became a musical called "Come From Away." It has since played in cities across the world. Few people watching that show realize the scholarship fund behind it is still cutting checks to real students, every single year.

Reminder of what Khrushchev said 60 years ago...."Your children's children will live under communism. You Americans are so gullible. No, you won't accept communism outright; but, we will keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you will finally wake up and find you already have Communism. We will not have to fight you. We will so weaken your economy, until you will fall like overripe fruit into our hands. The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not" It was September 29, 1959, when Nikita Khrushchev delivered his prediction for America at the United Nations. Remember the television coverage of him banging his shoe on the podium? At that time, just the word "communism" was feared throughout our nation. Remember this. Socialism leads to Communism How do you create a Socialist State? There are eight levels of control: 1) Healthcare - Control healthcare and you control the people 2) Poverty - Increase the poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them. 3) Debt - Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty. 4) Gun Control - Remove the ability to defend themselves from the government . That way you are able to create a police state. 5) Welfare - Take control of every aspect (food, housing, income) of their lives because that will make them fully dependent on the government. 6) Education - Take control of what people read, listen to and take control of what children learn in school. 7) Religion - Remove the belief in God from the government and schools because the people need to believe in ONLY the government knowing what is best for the people. 8)Class Warfare - Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. Eliminate the middle class. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to tax the rich with the support of the poor. WE ARE THERE!

Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence? Their story. . . Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War. They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants. Nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured. Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags. Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward. Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton , Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton. At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt. Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months. John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July holiday and silently thank these patriots. It's not much to ask for the price they paid. Remember: freedom is never free! I hope you will show your support by sending this to as many people as you can, please. It's time we get the word out that patriotism is NOT a sin, and the Fourth of July means more than beer, picnics, and baseball games. True "reflection" is a part of this country's greatness. Please be a participant. © 2015 Microsoft Terms Privacy & cookies Developers English (United States)