Pioneering pilot Beverly Bass has had the rare experience of watching someone portray a part of her life onstage. She's an inspiration for one of the characters in "Come From Away," the Broadway musical about kindness and community that lands Tuesday at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis.
"The first time I saw the show, I was gasping for air," Bass said. "The song, 'Me and the Sky,' chronicles my aviation life in 4 minutes and 19 seconds. I feel honored that they play me so magnificently."
If it gave Bass chills to see herself depicted by a live performer, one of the actors playing her got the willies.
"The first time she saw me do it was in the rehearsal room," said Becky Gulsvig, the Moorhead, Minn., native who has played Bass on Broadway and is doing so on the national tour. "We had just barely learned the show — it's like Jenga and pickup sticks and scrambled eggs all at once. And Bev and Tom, her husband, were sitting right there. My character rolls out her chair, picks up the phone and talks to Tom, and as I do it, Tom was 3 feet from me. I was just trying to survive."
Set in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, "Come From Away" is about the 38 planes diverted to Gander, Newfoundland, after U.S. airspace was shut down. Those planes brought nearly 7,000 passengers and crew members to a town with a population that was only slightly bigger.
Bass was overseeing one of those flights, a 10-hour trip from Paris to Dallas, Texas. She was instructing a student on the operation of the Boeing 777.
"We were over the middle of the North Atlantic — we didn't know any details," Bass recalled. "As we approached the Canadian coast, we knew all the airspace was closed. When you're ordered to land, we don't care what concrete we land on, we just want to put her down."