Let's Learn About... #28 - Come From Away: the Real-Life Event & the Incredible True Story of Beverly Bass

Charlotte: Hi! Welcome to new episode of Let's Learn About..., the show where we teach you things you don't really need to know about things you don't really need to know about... but we're going to teach them to you anyway.

Ellie: Our purpose and life is this podcast! It's been... it's been a week. It's been a few weeks, hasn't it?

Charlotte: Yep.

Ellie: It's been a little bit crazy recently.

Charlotte: Yeah, I've been quite proud of myself, the fact I've managed to be uploading episodes fairly regularly. I think I've been doing them actually weekly, which has been impressive on my part. But yeah, we haven't actually recorded together for like, I don't even know - it's like, over a month.

Ellie: A month and a half, I think we worked it out to be. So for you guys, you've been hearing an episode every single week, thanks to Charlotte's uploading and our ability to somehow bank about six episodes without realising it. And so, we've had some life stuff going on over the past few weeks, and we're fine now. Everything is good. We are back. We are recording.

Charlotte: It feels so good!

Ellie: Even if we have really had teething problems.

Charlotte: Yeah, as usual!

Ellie: It's gonna be okay. We're here.

Charlotte: Let's do this. So it's my episode today, and I am diving into kind of one of my favourite things: musical theatre. Kind of—it's linked to it. So it's something I've already mentioned in the past. I have mentioned, in a previous episode, my love for the show Come From Away. And I thought I would do a whole episode—because it's based on a true story—I thought I'd do a whole episode on the actual event that the musical is based on, because it's such a just... it's just such a great thing that... well, not a great thing that happened because it happened out of tragedy. But story wise, it's just such a great story. And then I'll also talk about yet another incredible woman because we love our awesome women.

[begin pre-recorded intro]

Charlotte: Before we get into this episode, we want to remind you of a couple of ways you can help support the show.

Ellie: Make sure you follow us on social media to stay up to date - we are @learnaboutpod on Instagram and Twitter.

Charlotte: You can also visit our website, learnaboutpod.com where you'll find notes and resources all of our episodes, and you can sign up to get notified of new and upcoming episodes via email. That's learnaboutpod.com.

Ellie: Enjoy the show!

[end pre-recorded intro]

Ellie: We do! I think it's kind of - it's what started the podcast. And it was never intended to be the main thing we talk about, but it's kind of become it, and I do love it. And I've know nothing about this play, so I'm very excited to hear what you've got for us today.

Charlotte: Yeah. So I'll give you a quick kind of intro to what the musical is about, and then I'll go into the actual event. This is similar to my Titanic one, I've just realised - it's kind of comparing an actual real life event with its like adaptation. So, Come from Away: it's basically about... it all happens over four days. And the whole show is only an hour and a half. It's one act - there's no interval.

Ellie: So it like SIX [the Musical] in that respect.

Charlotte: Yeah, it is. It's just really fast paced, I think because it all happened—it was such a whirlwind for the people that were involved, so it all happens kind of over one act and it's just really fast. But it's set during 9/11. So at the start of the show, 911 has just happened and all of the planes that were supposed to be flying over New York had to divert. So they basically completely closed the US airspace and all the planes had to divert to various other places, mostly Canada.

And it's all about these people who... there were loads of planes that were diverted to this little town in Canada called Gander. And Gander is such a small place. The population is only 10,000. And 7,000 people were diverted there overnight. And so this little town was suddenly overwhelmed by its population almost doubling overnight, and they kind of, they just welcomed them and this community just kind of brought everything together and they pulled all the resources and they welcomed all these people like they were their own.

And it's just such a nice story, especially within the past couple of years where there's been loads of stuff with refugees and things like that. It's like such a heartwarming story all about this little town that all work together to accept these people overnight. So as soon as I saw it, I saw it in London last year, and I was like, instantly intrigued to learn more about the actual event that happened because the musical covers the event pretty perfectly. Most of the characters are real people - like, they're actually based on real people.

So I thought I'd talk more about the true story of it, and also one of the pilots who is a very famous pilot, Beverly Bass. I am going to go into her story as well. She's just such an incredible woman. So I'll start with Gander and the actual true story of Gander and what happened. So in total, 255 planes had to be diverted to several towns all over Canada, and 38 of those planes were diverted to Gander. 38 planes. It's just incredible. Like, Gander airport is one of Canada's biggest airports, despite it only being a town of 10,000 people.

Ellie: How does that work?

Charlotte: They talk about it in the show. It was made to be like a military airport or something - I can't remember now. But loads of famous people have flown into this airport. And yeah, it opened in 1938. So I think it was maybe like a kind of military airport. And even though it's one of the largest airports, it was still massively overcrowded when all these planes landed there. 38 planes all landed there. Because of the heat and the weight of all planes, several of them started sinking into the tarmac. Not only were they diverted, they also then were struggling to leave when they were allowed to leave because their planes were literally sinking into the runway.

Ellie: Oh, that's always the start of a horror story. "You may arrive, but you will never leave. [evil laugh]"

Charlotte: Yep. So because obviously it was a massive security threat, like security was on high alert, once the planes landed, the people on them has to stay put on them for 28 hours. Again, it's all talked about in the songs of like this show. There's a whole song where they talk about being stuck on the plane for like, over a day. Like it was entire day plus 4 hours.

And obviously because it was 2001, this was before social media and smartphones, so they had no way of knowing what was going on. Like, they were literally stuck on this plane, and nobody knew why the crew didn't want to tell them yet in case obviously any of them are from New York or if anyone has family there or whatever. They didn't want them stuck on this plane with this news, not being able to get off and call people. So they knew that something had happened. But they weren't told what had happened. So there were all these people on 38 planes just stuck, having no idea what had just happened.

Ellie: That must be like the worst kind of limbo existence. Also, could people get hold of them? Because like, if any of them were from New York and their friends and family knew that they were on a plane heading to New York, could people contact them?

Charlotte: I'm not sure.

Ellie: Like, not only are they in limbo, but their friends and family don't know whether they were on one of the planes.

Charlotte: Yeah. So once they were allowed off the planes, they could only take their hand luggage with them. Obviously, their luggage was still kind of stuck somewhere. So they only had their hand luggage, so people didn't have clothes or anything. And they could finally get off the planes. And then the only way they could watch or find out what had happened was by watching the news.

So there's this bit in the show where they actually pull out like this massive TV and people are kind of crowding around the screens to watch the news, because that was the only way they could find out. And then they were suddenly seeing this thing on the news where they were watching the plane go into the towers, and that was the first they'd heard of it after like 28 hours after it happened, or more - then just finding out about it, which is terrifying.

So yeah, once they all arrived in Gander, they were there for four days, which put massive pressure on Gander's resources. Obviously, again, 10,000 population, and all their resources were kind of strained, and people had a few phones - they didn't have that many pay phones. So people are scrambling to use phones and things. And they actually had to put some phones out of order so that they could make sensible queues. So people had to queue for hours to get to a phone. And then they were clearing out supermarkets; everything was just suddenly just carnage.

But the reason the story is so incredible is just because all the townsfolk just came together and they helped all the arrivals, and they kind of offered them their homes and food and entertainment and stuff. And it was just like this big community spirit, and it was just so nice. And by the time these four days were over, none of the residents would accept any money or anything for their help. They were just kind of like, "no, that's what we're here for."

Ellie: Bless their heart.

Charlotte: So when they were on their way, like the planes were allowed to leave to depart back to America, they started gathering money and resources and stuff. And before the planes had even returned to their original destinations, they had $15,000 that they kind of pledged to Gander to help. And then loads more money was raised, like thousands and thousands of dollars was raised within like the next few weeks or months after this happened, and they ended up putting it into a big scholarship fund for the children of Gander. So the parents and whatever didn't have to pay for the children to to be educated or whatever, they could just pay for the children's education, so it kind of took a load off all the adults.

Ellie: Yeah. It's stuff like that that makes you believe in humanity again, especially nowadays where we've seen over the last couple of months the selfishness of people reading supermarkets for like the last bit of loo roll and you know all that, and then you hear about stories like that where it's communities coming together like community should.

Charlotte: And like, not expecting anything for it either. They're just like, no, this is what we're here for. Oh, I love it. So if you want to learn more about the story, the full show cast recording is available on Spotify and I think all the songs are probably on YouTube if you don't want to pay for streaming.

But yeah, because most of the show is told through songs, it means that when you listen to the album, you get most of the show, like you get most of the story told to you just through the songs. And it literally does. It's perfect at telling you the entire story. And it's just so good. Like it goes into all the different cultures that we're mixing together, because obviously on planes you don't know where all these people are coming from - they could be coming internationally. So you've got all these religions and cultures mixing and you've got people kind of borrowing people's clothes. And there's like this big song that I just love where it's all about, like, they're all basically accepting them as residents of Gander.

And it's just... I love the show so much. But the songs are genuinely so good as well. Like I just put the album on and listen to it because the songs are so great. But it's such a powerful story that runs through them as well. So I would definitely recommend listening to it because the story is just incredible.

Ellie: Well, that is what I'm going to be doing tonight. Stopping the nightly Hamilton-fest and trying a bit of Come From Away instead.

Charlotte: Yes, please do! So, as I said at the beginning, Beverly Bass, I forgot to mention her. Actually, she is such a big part of the show, because she was one of the pilots whose plane was diverted to Gander, and she just has such an amazing story. And I just, I had to talk about it.

So the show was kind of inspired a lot by her, like most of the story was kind of inspired by interviews and things that she gave the writers. I'll go more into that, but yeah, so she's definitely someone I need to talk about. So I'll talk about her. So she was raised in Florida, and she would often go hunting on horseback with her father. And she was, I think, maybe the kind of idea I get is that she's quite a tomboy. So she kind of into horse riding, she went hunting with her dad, but then she also went to fashion shows with a mother so it was kind of like, she would have both ends of the spectrum.

Ellie: Get you a girl that can do both!

Charlotte: Yes, exactly! So she also had a fascination with planes, of course, and she decided that she wanted to start taking flight lessons as soon as she turned 16. Like as soon as she possibly could, she was like, "I want to learn to fly." But her parents kind of initially decided that they wanted her to continue her interest in the family's horses. They were just kind of like, flying is a dangerous thing to do. Especially when she's only 16 years old. So although they had her best interests at heart, they also didn't believe in setting limitations for her. They were just kind of like, we don't want to limit what she does. Her parents seem incredible.

Ellie: Yeah, they're the kind of parents that everyone should be fortunate enough to have.

Charlotte: Yeah. So although they wouldn't allow her to fly while she was still at home before she went off to college, they finally caved when she came home after her first year of university. And they were like, "you're an adult, you can decide what you do." So she started taking her first flying lessons and from then on, she was kind of adamant that this is what she would do for the rest of her life.

However, this was the 1970s, which was rife with gender discrimination. And yeah, like I said, the way that Beverly was raised, her parents kind of taught her that she can do anything that she puts her mind to, like things aren't gendered. You can do—if you want to do something, you can do it. But she still had to kind of face this harsh reality that even if she's as qualified as her male counterparts, it's still going to be harder to get the same jobs. So female aviation pilots were just unheard of, like, that just wasn't a thing. But nothing deterred her. She was like, "well, this is what I want to do. So I'm gonna do it."

Ellie: YES!

Charlotte: I love her.

Ellie: So do I!

Charlotte: So she landed her first job as an airline pilot with American Airlines in 1976. But leading to that moment, she had a handful of smaller aviation jobs, including a job transporting dead bodies to different states on behalf of a local mortician.

Ellie: Lovely.

Charlotte: Yeah, so it was just her on her own in a small plane with a dead person. It was like if they had to be transferred to, like, the state where they come from or whatever. Because I know American laws are really weird with like, where you're allowed to be buried and stuff, like, what state you're allowed to be buried in? I don't know. So it was her job on behalf of morticians to fly bodies across America. Doesn't sound ideal.

Ellie: Quite a journey, though!

Charlotte: Yeah. So she said in an interview, I'll put the link to his interview in the notes because it's so many great quotes from her, where she just kind of talks about a whole career. But she said: "Those are probably the darkest moments of my career and my friends were getting hired and my application was in American Airlines. It was the only airline I wanted to work for, but I wasn't getting hired. At the time, Texas was a little more conservative in terms of what they would let a woman do."

So she watched people a lot younger than her, like people that were a few years younger than her at least, in other states advance through their career much faster than she did. And it was really frustrating because she was watching these people get to the point where she wanted to be, even though they were years behind. So she kept just putting herself through all these really strenuous jobs that would look impressive on her resume, basically. So she did a lot of like transporting cargo and all of these jobs that are just like - some of them quite dangerous to do. But she just wanted to build up this really impressive kind of resume.

And it kind of paid off - like, she was eventually offered an interview at American Airlines, but just getting the interview was kind of just the beginning. The interview involved a medical exam, and more. Another quote from her, she said: "For one or two days, every single thing on you was tested. Your eyes, heart, lung strength, hearing, psychological testing, you have to have 20/20 uncorrected vision, you have to be at least five foot six if you wanted to be hired." Like, back in the day, there were so many guidelines - or like, not even guidelines, but just like things that were mandatory.

Ellie: But were they actually mandatory or were they mandatory for her? The sceptical part of me thinks, were they just trying to come up with any excuse not to hire her? I don't know whether that's true. But that's just me reading into things.

Charlotte: But, I mean, it's the 70s. Like, who knows? So on top of that, there was also a section of the interview where she had five pilot chiefs just firing questions at her, one by one. And then she had to do a flying simulator. So there were so many parts to this, but she managed it. She got through it, she managed to succeed. She became qualified as a pilot at quite a fortunate time, when the doors were finally starting to open for women. And she was one of these first woman that kind of got through the doors as they were opening. She kept rising her way up. And in 1986 she became America's first female captain for American Airlines.

Ellie: I love this lady. I've never heard of her before.

Charlotte: She's incredible. She's such a big part of this show as well. And I just love it that it, like, it centres on her a lot. So yeah, her career kind of became a lot less sort of tentative and stressful once she had this. She kind of got to the point where she wanted to be.

But obviously it wasn't without its struggles: as we've just seen, she was one of the pilots that had to divert when 9/11 happened, and she was flying from Paris to New York. So she was actually meant to be landing in New York when she was diverted to Gander. There's - again, there's a big part of the show that talks about her experience and how the pilot that was actually flying the plane that crashed into one of the towers, she was at a pub with in London like, a few days before.

Ellie: Oh, god.

Charlotte: Yeah. So she was kind of gutted, like, she found out from her husband that she actually, literally a few days before, was in a pub with the guy who was the pilot of the flight. So yeah, it was obviously it was a tough time for her. But it kind of affected her family a lot because her daughter - she had an eight year old daughter at the time - and her daughter always said that she wanted to follow her mum and be a pilot, but for like years after 9/11 happened, she literally never mentioned being a pilot again. It kind of just put her off for life.

But since then, Beverly has always kind of been really passionate about giving back to the women who follow in her footsteps. In 1978, so a couple of years after she became qualified, she co-founded the International Society for Women Airline Pilots. To start with, thre were 21 women as part of their society, which was 50% of the female pilots in the US.

Ellie: Holy crap!

Charlotte: Like, that means there were only 42 female pilots in the whole of the US. That's ridiculous. And they attended the organization's first convention, and it was basically like a convention that had meetings and kind of tutorials and all sorts on how to get into the industry. Today, the society has 600 members, and they host conventions all over the world. I think this interview was from last year and she said last year's was Sydney and I think this year's is in Dublin. So it's like all over the world these conventions happen now, where she's basically just trying to get women interested in aviation.

Ellie: Yes! Women, women, women!

Charlotte: She is kind of one of these people where anything isn't enough, like, anything that she can do isn't enough and she still wants to do more. So, even today, women comprise less than 5% of American Airlines pilots and female captains only represent 2% of the total number. So 2% of captains are female. So, yeah, she's constantly, even now, she's constantly striving to do more.

So since retiring in 2008, she kind of retired as a commercial pilot in 2008. She thought she'd be living a quiet, peaceful life, and then Come From Away came along! In 2011, she gave a 4-hour interview to the playwrights, Irene Sankoff and David Heine. The playwrights of Come From Away. They sat for hours with her and they just gathered stories that would kind of form the book and the lyrics of the musical and her and her husband, Tom have seen the show over 70 times.

Ellie: So clearly, they like it.

Charlotte: Yeah, they're clearly happy with how she's portrayed. And she said when she watched the show, she said: "I was shocked at how prominent my part was. And I was astounded when I heard the song." She - Beverley Bass in the show has a big song called 'Me and the Sky'. It's kind of like the famous song from Come From Away. Like, it's the one that most people have heard and it literally chronicles her entire life from start to finish.

She said, "When I heard the song, I was astounded because if you were to read the transcript of my interview with David and Irene, they literally pulled paragraphs out verbatim and made the song." So they literally wrote this song with her transcripts, like everything she's singing in the song came from her mouth.

Ellie: That's beautiful.

Charlotte: So again, if you haven't heard the song, if you don't have time to listen to the entire soundtrack, listen to that. 'Me and the Sky' is the song. It's just Beverly, it's like a solo. It's so upbeat, and it's just incredible. I just love it and you need to listen to that song. I'll put the link actually in the notes to the song on YouTube so you can go and listen to it for free like now, because it tells her entire story like from childhood to now, or to when the musical set. It tells her entire story in like four minutes. It's such a good song.

So today, Beverly still flies in the private sector. And she has also written a children's book called 'Me and the Sky', named after the song, to kind of give children the opportunity to see that they can become anything they want to be, which I just...

Ellie: Excellent.

Charlotte: Yeah. And one thing that I also found out that I just love so much is that her daughter Paige, who was the daughter who was eight, she actually went on to - I think once she was 16, she actually started taking flying lessons. And she's now 27 and she is now a captain at kind of sub-airline as part of American Airlines. So she's actually grown up to follow in her mum's footsteps. She's actually now a captain of American Airlines. It just makes me so happy. Her eight year old dreams were temporarily crushed when she never talked about it for years. She didn't even mention being a pilot after all this happened with her mum. And it just makes me so happy that she then went on to kind of get over it and decide that no, she is going to learn. She is going to learn to fly. And now she's actually a captain.

Ellie: Don't give up on your dream!

Charlotte: Yeah! So Beverly now mentors young women now who want to get into the industry. She mentored her daughter and yeah, she's now - Envoy Air, which is like the largest regional carrier for American Airlines, she's now a captain for them, which I just love. There are photos of Paige flying, and Beverly and Tom are sat in the back of the plane, the three of them all flying together. I love it so much. This family!

Ellie: Why is this such a feel good story?!

Charlotte: I know! This family are just incredible. I love them. So you couldn't have a better person really to inspire a massive international musical. It's won Tony [Awards], it's just been like - it's blown everyone away. It's so good. It's just so unique. And I could just talk about this show for ages. I've done a whole review actually on my YouTube channel. I'll post that in the links because I talked about like the music more in depth and there's like clips from the music and stuff, but I could just talk about it forever. But Beverly Bass is just incredible and I love her.

Ellie: I don't know what it is, but there seems to be a real influx recently of musicals that have made it really big that are focusing on sort of like the achievements of women. So like, obviously Come From Away. SIX. Actually, physically, the whole premise of the musical is taking six stories of six women that are usually sidelined in favour of King Henry VIII. And these women actually have some really cool stories. And even Hamilton, like, everyone automatically thinks, "oh, it's about Alexander Hamilton." But actually, when you get to the end of the musical, you realise, no, it's almost as much, if not more, Eliza's story as well as Alexander's.

Charlotte: And Angelica too - Angelica plays such a big part, too.

Ellie: Yeah, exactly. And a lot of people - there's just a lot of musicals at the moment that have very strong, central female figures and they're, like, blowing up. And it's awesome. I love seeing it. As much as you hear sort of like, how crappy it can be for women even in today's modern age, you then see how far we come, like in Beverly's career span, like what she was up against in the 70s versus where she is now. It makes you excited to see - if that's how much it can change in... what is it, 40 years? What could it be like in the next 40 years?

Charlotte: Yeah. So she's actually said in the past that women aren't actually like, especially in in aviation, it's still seen now as one of those things where women struggle to get ahead. But I think one good thing about now is that you do have these mentors, like you have people like Beverly and you've just got the stories of women becoming captains and you've got all of these mentors that they didn't have then, that even though it is still a struggle, you've got all these really incredible women that are kind of there to be like, "no, look, you can do it. We did it in the 70s. So you can do it now!"

Ellie: You do it now. Yes. Like they took the first step so that the next generation could run.

Charlotte: And yeah, I just... this little family, I love so much. And yeah, everyone needs to go and - obviously no one can watch the show at the moment, but go and listen to the show because, like I said, listening to the soundtrack of Come From Away, you're practically listening to like almost the entire show. Like you get the whole story. There's a lot of dialogue in the tracks as well. So it really is just like you get to listen to the entire show, and it's just such a good story. Even though it kind of originated out of tragedy, it's just such a heartwarming story and it's just one that I think we need now. It's all about acceptance and I just I could just gush over it forever.

Ellie: A perfect thing to listen to. Let's make this one of our really long episodes. [laughs]

Charlotte: Yeah. So, have that as your takeaway: go and go and listen to it. Because you'll just find out so much more about it. But if you don't have time to listen to the whole thing yet, just listen to 'Me and the Sky'. Because it's kind of like that pinpoint song from the whole show that just tells her whole story. And it's just incredible to listen to. So go listen, go to the website - learnaboutpod.com - and you can just find all of the episodes there. All the links that I've mentioned will be in the notes so you can find out more.

Ellie: Yes. And also, we are doing a really cool thing at the moment in that we are now beginning to transcribe episodes for those of you out there that are hard of hearing so that you can read stuff that we end up talking about.

Charlotte: Yeah, obviously transcripts kind of take a little while to do. So we're getting round to them slowly. We'll be working from the latest episodes backwards. But yeah, you can go to the website and you can download - you can read it on there, or you can download a PDF of the entire transcript. So if you do want to read it, please do. You can also follow us on our social media. We will try and use them more.

Ellie: Yeah - we're busy!

Charlotte: It's been crazy, but I've started using it more already. So we're @learnaboutpod on Twitter and Instagram, so go follow us there and you can get updates and stuff of what we're doing and the episodes that are coming out soon. And you can just say hi, or if you've got any ideas for episodes because we're always open to ideas, and yeah, we will see you next week.

Ellie: See you next week!