Fall, 2001 Theatre Trips

We've been operating theatre tours to New York and London since 1983, and there are some great memories, as well as some not-so-great. We had two trips scheduled for fall, 2001. The first, and saddest, was set for September 13, 2001, with 73 participants-our largest trip to date. On Tuesday, Sept 11, it quickly became apparent that the trip was no longer viable. Amid the shock, horror and grief, we had to take the necessary steps to communicate with all participants regarding their cancelled travel plans.

In addition to the business task at hand, I had my own personal tension. My two daughters, Kristina and Stephanie, had moved to New York less than a week earlier. Stephanie had transferred from the University of Minnesota to Marymount Manhattan College, on the upper east side, to become a theatre major. Kristina, a spring, 2001 graduate of Grinnell College, had moved in with friends in Chelsea, not far from the World Trade Center, ready to pursue her career as an actor. I'll expand on this more in a subsequent blog, and many people experienced much worse than my family on that day, but just thinking of it now, that harrowing phone call, getting Kristina out of bed, telling her to turn on the tv and trying to strategize her next moves with her, making sure her sister was ok, brings back the emotion.

This particular blog is about the trips. My next step was that I needed to get to New York, make sure my kids were ok, and return $23,000 worth of theatre tickets.

I made that solo trip two weeks later, with the fires still burning at ground zero, and the city still stunned. My kids were ok, still in shock, not yet having come to terms with the enormity of what had happened, but noticing, along with me, the particular brand of PTSD that New Yorkers adopted in the months following - a complete elimination of all gruffness, an open friendly and warm attitude that was the opposite of their previous reputation.

Surprisingly, I had trouble getting refunds for the tickets. I had to go to each theatre and make the case that we were going to buy other tickets, because most of the people had re-scheduled for another trip, but that we needed our money back. Ultimately, the Theatre League, a non-profit organization of Broadway and touring theatre managers, made it clear that the best course of action was to refund or exchange those tickets.

Many of the September participants were able to sign on for our November trip. The city and the country were still in shock. La Guardia airport was almost empty. Soldiers with automatic weapons patrolled the airport.

The trip participants shared taxis on Saturday morning to Pier 78 on the Hudson River for our New York Waterways harbor cruise. One group of four asked their taxi driver what he did and how he reacted on September 11. Instead of delivering them directly to the pier, he drove them to ground zero, told them his story, his persepective, and wept with them. He dropped them at our tour departure site, late, but still in time for the tour, and refused to take a fare.