JFK Sanctuary
Airport Chaplain to the Rescue Of Passengers Stranded in N.Y.
By Marie Elena Giossi
Published:
05/01/2010
|
| Good Samaritans donated food, magazines, books and anything else they thought stranded travelers could use to Our Lady of the Skies Chapel at JFK Airport. Above, the O’Rourke family of Cedarhurst, from left, Joan Ann, James, Katie and Kennedy, brought Father Chris Piasta, O.F.M., Our Lady of the Skies chaplain, at right, over $500 worth of food on two evenings. |
When plumes of volcanic ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano paralyzed flights across the globe in mid-April, locally stranded travelers found sanctuary at JFK International Airport. Now that flights are back to normal, so too is everyday life for Father Chris Piasta, O.F.M.
Just two months into his new assignment as chaplain of Our Lady of the Skies Chapel at Kennedy Airport, he’s still defining what normal is and what he can expect in this role. Two weeks ago, he wasn’t expecting hundreds of people to be camping outside the chapel’s glass doors.
“This place is so unusual even without this complication. Who would have thought one volcano would paralyze half the world,” he said on a recent evening.
Unshaven and tired from a day of running around, he sat at his desk with a cup of coffee, lukewarm from unintended neglect, to reflect on his experiences serving an ever-changing flock, particularly the ones that had been taking up temporary residence in the chapel corner of Terminal Four.
More than a dozen hours earlier, he rose after a short night’s sleep at St. Anastasia rectory, Douglaston, where he resides, and arrived at the chapel to hand out bagels, celebrate Mass and find out what each traveler needed most. For some, it was assistance replenishing required medications. For others, it was Internet and telephone access. But for most, it was the reassurance that they had a place to stay until they could fly home.
Thousands of cancelled flights caused by the volcanic ash cloud sweeping across Europe gave rise to camps of stranded travelers in four terminals at JFK. In Terminal Four, the airport’s Tri-Faith Chapels Museum and affiliated chaplains worked closely with the Port Authority, Travelers Aid and the American Red Cross to coordinate efforts to provide food, shelter and basic necessities to those on a forced layover. Support came from Diocese of Brooklyn and Archdiocese of New York in the form of a $7,000 grant.
Over the last couple weeks, Father Piasta has encountered stranded travelers “from all over, mostly Germany, France, England and Spain.” Many were traveling for leisure. Some were on business, includung the doctor who had just arrived from Beijing, where she was laid over for two days, after doing work on the Myanmar-Thailand boarder. She was waiting to return to Spain.
Others were flying for particular reasons, like the Belgian student visiting schools in New York or the British woman returning from a funeral in Jamaica. Everyone had a different story, different issues, different needs to be met.
“On a very human level, there’s been a lot of positive interaction – goodness, warmth, understanding. Simply being here for them and with them is what truly matters to people,” said the priest.
“There are many levels of ministry beginning with the basics, from finding a hot cup of coffee or a bottle of water, to talking with someone having a bit of a breakdown and then anything in between and beyond.”
One couple he met from San Francisco came to Mass and wanted to speak with him afterward “about their past, their problems, their future. I don’t even know if they’re Catholic and it doesn’t matter if they’re Catholic or non-Catholic.
“It’s all part of what we do here at JFK,” said the young chaplain, who learned the ropes from his predecessor, Father Gerard Walker, whom he assisted for the last four years. A Polish-born priest of the Diocese of Blenhein, Germany, Father Piasta also serves as administrator of St. Joseph parish, Jamaica, and teaches theology at St. John’s University, Jamaica
After most travelers were resting on cots, Father Piasta put his coffee down yet again. It was time to go grocery shopping to buy several dozen bagels, boxes of doughnuts and cereal, packets of oatmeal, gallons of milk and juice, and yogurt cups for the next day’s breakfast.
There had been about 200 guests sleeping outside the chapel the previous evening. As 8 p.m. approached, the chaplain noticed there were only about 80 stalled fliers. The smaller numbers enabled airport security to grant strandees access to the nearby “red carpet area,” normally the site for VIP events.
Security officers monitored the enclosed room, where would-be passengers slept away from the public eye in neat rows on white metal-framed, green canvas cots covered by American Red Cross blankets with their luggage tucked underneath.
In addition to the morning, afternoon and evening meals being prepared for them, hot beverages, bottled water and snacks were available around the clock to accommodate every schedule.
“There are a number of people, for lack of a better term, strangers, bringing food and water. Most don’t call first; some do to ask what we need,” he said.
He’s gratefully accepted donations of groceries, books, magazine, board games, toothbrushes, toothpaste “all sorts of things” that have been arriving.
Moments later, as if on cue, two luggage carts filled with bags of ready-to-eat items, paper goods, toiletries, coloring books and crayons as well as ten 24-packs of bottled water arrived courtesy of the O’Rourke family, parishioners at St. Joachim, Cedarhurst.
“Whoa,” Father Piasta said upon seeing the bags.
“Everything is going to be well used,” he assured Katie O’Rourke, who recruited her husband James, their three-year-old daughter, Kennedy, and James’ sister, Joan Ann, to help with the shopping.
The previous evening, Katie had read in the newspaper about the people stranded at JFK and living on fast food. She and Joan Ann picked up some goods at a local market and brought them to JFK, where they met Father Piasta.
“I talked it up among people and they had also read the stories but didn’t know how to help,” Katie said. That day, she collected $520 in donations from her boss and colleagues at the McNamara Group in Rockville Centre as well as family and friends.
The O’Rourkes hit the market again and brought even more on their second trip. Among their offerings were two bags of gluten-free food, which Katie bought because she remembered Father Piasta had told her about a German girl with a gluten allergy who couldn’t eat much of the other available food.
That same servant spirit later drew Kathy, a high school physics teacher, and her German-born friend, Hassan, both from Nassau County, to stop by and find out what items they could pick up for the strandees. Travelers were set for the night, Father Piasta said, but he didn’t know what needs would arise the next day. Kathy had $300 to spend and told him to call or e-mail her with a wish list.
Earlier that day, a Long Island City man had dropped off a loaf of bread and a can of soda. In his blog, the chaplain commented that the man, who didn’t look like he had much, gave generously of what he did have, like the poor widow from the Gospels.
“It’s phenomenal,” he told The Tablet. “There are so many people coming forward to help and their spontaneous response shows that people from New York care. They don’t need an invitation. They simply do it because they feel they have to help.” They formed, what Father Piasta called an “invisible network of people of goodwill.”
That goodwill is something travelers like Walter Gutbrodd will always remember.
“I was very surprised by how well supported we are here. We got beds, blankets, warm food. The churches and Red Cross have helped us tremendously,” Gutbrodd said 29 hours into his stay at Camp Kennedy.
After visiting a friend and vacationing in New York, he learned that his flight home to Stuttgart had been canceled due to the ash clouds. Although he had another day and a half to wait for a flight, he considered himself “very lucky” to be stranded in such decent conditions. “I believe all the passengers feel the same,” he said.