Stranded R.I. Businesspeople Hit The Road
By Sarah Sparks
WASHINGTON – Don Sweitzer didn’t want to wait for the airports to be up and running. He was stranded in Lexington, Ky., surrounded by the governors of eight states, desperate to get home. So he hit the road.
Sweitzer, senior vice president for public affairs at Gtech in West Greenwich, heard about the World Trade Center attack at a meeting of the Southern Governors Association in Lexington, which he was attending to promote his company. He joined several other Rhode Island businesspeople who were stranded far from home and decided to hit the road.
James LeBelle, national sales manager for KVH in Middletown, was already driving in a rented car when a radio announcer broadcast the first plane attack. LeBelle had left a trade show in Harrisburg, Penn. for a two-hour drive to catch a mid-morning Southwest flight to Providence from the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. When he heard about the multiple attacks, LeBelle said, “I didn’t even bother going to the airport or calling the car rental agency because I figured I was probably a nuisance and they were probably overwhelmed with other calls. And I didn’t know whether it (the attack) would escalate to something greater.”
For the next 15 hours, LeBelle followed a careful course – up Highway 81, over Highway 84 east, across Connecticut and into Rhode Island – stopping only to grab food in gas stations and steering clear of cities. “I entirely mapped it out so I would go way far away. I went almost up into Albany to avoid New York City,” he said.
LeBelle was able to get through to his wife’s mobile phone from time to time, but most of his information came over the radio. “Unfortunately, I listened to one radio station that said there was something like 30 or 31 planes hijacked, and it took about an hour and a half for them to come out and say that was incorrect,” LeBelle said.
“So you’re thinking, 31 airplanes hijacked in the United States, that’s pretty much every major city. … All I could think about was: this could escalate to something like war; I didn’t know what would happen next.”
For the most part, LeBelle found the radio comforting, though. Sweitzer listened too in the car he was driving, though he said the radio made the trip difficult; it was a constant reminder of the tragedy unfolding in New York and Washington.
Kristen Levy, press representative for American Power in West Kingston, at least had human comfort. She and her 12 co-workers caravanned back in several cars from a trade show in Chicago after their flights were cancelled. “Everyone was afraid and just unsure of what was going on. We were all worried about family and friends and that sort of thing,” Levy said. “It was just shock … we were all at a loss for words for what was going on.”
At least a hundred Rhode Island businesspeople are still marooned across the country and overseas, and as airports remain closed day after day, more and more of them may be forced to drive or find another form of transportation. Jane White, human resources director for Textron in Providence, said that two employees locked out of flights in Chicago and Atlanta also rented cars and drove back.
And Bob Richer, human resources director of Brown & Sharpe in North Kingstown, said the company is urging 25 to 40 grounded employees not to fly home right away even if airports open before Monday. “We’re just telling them to sit tight,” Richer said, until it is clearly safe to come home.
But for those like Sweitzer and LeBelle, work and family pulled them home as fast as they could drive. Sweitzer went straight to work, arriving at 4 p.m. Wednesday and filling in his colleagues before going home to sleep.
LeBelle returned to Providence at 2 a.m. Wednesday and was back at work early the next day.
