Fifteen years ago, on the day the World Trade Center fell, the Pentagon burned and almost 3,000 people died, hundreds of aircraft carrying thousands of frightened passengers were ordered to land.

Any one of the planes in the air that morning of Sept. 11, 2001, could have been another death missile. Who knew how big this terrorist attack was?

When the United States shut down its airspace, tiny Gander International Airport in Newfoundland opened its runways, taking in 38 wide-body planes on trans-Atlantic routes.

And this is where one of the many inspiring stories of Sept. 11 unfolded.

The people of Gander, a town of no more than 10,000, looked at all those planes lined up on the airport’s runway and didn’t think of terrorism, didn’t see potential attacks. They just wanted to help.

It was a logistical challenge. They didn’t have hotels or restaurants to take in nearly 7,000 passengers, and they knew that the people from more than 100 countries stuck on those planes were mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, grandmothers. Just like the Newfoundlanders were.

The people of Gander and surrounding fishing villages filled their schools, community rooms and churches with cots for stranded passengers.

The town’s bus drivers, who were on strike that day, walked off their picket lines and went back to work. Bakeries went into overdrive production, hospitals staffed up and many of the townspeople opened their homes and offered their beds to the “plane people.” They found a way to care for the 17 dogs and cats and the two great apes who were also aboard the planes.

There, on a Canadian island of green hills and rocky coasts, humans were at their best.

“9/11 will live long in memory as a day of terror and grief,” said then-Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, at the Gander airport on the one-year anniversary of the attacks. “But thanks to the countless acts of kindness and compassion done for those stranded visitors here in Gander and right across Canada, it will live forever in memory as a day of comfort and of healing.”

The story of Gander is so remarkable that it has inspired a musical, Come From Away.

The people of the plane included the frantic parents of a New York City firefighter (he died), a man and woman who fell in love in Gander (they got married) and a gay couple who worried about whether a small Canadian town would welcome them (it did).

Most of us still have vivid memories of the horror of that day. We relive our fear those terrorists instilled in our society every time we take off our shoes at the airport, go through a metal detector at a museum or maneuver past ugly concrete bollards.

But let’s also consider the incredible acts of bravery we witnessed that day. And the days that humans were at their best in a small town in Newfoundland.