9/11: “When Is Paradise Not a Good Thing?”

Dave Morrow and five friends were fishing at Alaska’s Copper River Lodge and having the time of their lives when news of the 9/11 attacks came over the radiotelephone.  As Leo Roth writes, they then struggled with “feelings of frustration, anger, guilt and isolation — of being unable to find peace in paradise,” when air traffic was grounded indefinitely and news arrived only via a faint news signal from a tiny AM radio.

Brian Pitre, a member of the group, tells the personal side of the story in his guest article in the Henrietta Messenger Post:  “On Tuesday morning, September 11, the generators were switched on at our lodge, and my roommate Ben and I arose to a knock at the door. It was Jean. He was looking for Ben, who thought Jean was going to tell him the bears had gotten into his rods that he had left on the boat the night before. But it wasn’t that, said Jean.”