by Sara Rimer, New York Times
LITITZ, Pa. - The 3:50 p.m. US Airways Express flight to Pittsburgh was ready for boarding at Lancaster County Airport. It was the second flight of the day. Twelve passengers — the entire planeload — got in the security line.
Sgt. First Class Gary DeCola, a National Guardsman with a side arm, was on the alert for terrorist activity. He looked in the handle of a passenger’s tennis racket and stood by as another passenger, a man whose wife and three small children were waving goodbye from a few feet away, unlaced his steel-tipped boots, which had set off the alarm. One woman set off the alarm when she accidentally walked through with her purse. Sergeant DeCola nodded at the regular commuters he recognized, but he made sure they took out their laptops, like everyone else.
In about five minutes the line had disappeared and everyone had boarded. The airport emptied, except for a handful of employees and two Guardsmen — Sergeant DeCola and Capt. James Michael Fluck, a Pennsylvania National Guard commander who oversees the units that have been stationed at the Philadelphia and Lancaster County airports since the terrorist attacks. It was a couple of hours before the third and final flight of the day, also to Pittsburgh.
Does he get bored? Yes he does, said Sergeant DeCola, whose father served in World War II and Vietnam. “I just try to stay alert and make the people feel comfortable.”
His Humvee was parked out front, one more sign that even at this sleepy airport, in the middle of farmland 75 miles west of Philadelphia, flying is no longer routine. There are new concrete barricades. The days are gone when spouses could sit in their cars out front, motors idling, waiting for arriving flights.
Inside the airport, with its single ticket counter, a small sign warns passengers of random searches. So far the only thing resembling a weapon that screeners here have confiscated was a can of Mace. “It’s not like Philly,” said Captain Fluck, 33, a former Army paratrooper.
The Lancaster airport is essentially one large waiting room, with a Coke machine, a telephone with a laptop modem, a Hertz and Avis counter, an oversize American flag hanging from the ceiling beams, the Flying Machine cafe (Sergeant DeCola recommends the chicken cheese steak) and sweeping views of the runway and a dairy farm beyond.
Sergeant DeCola, 36, remains ever vigilant. “A good leader always puts himself in the minds of the enemies,” he said. “Anything could happen. The terrorists could come to a smaller airport to commute to a bigger airport to get on a jetliner.”
The main action in the terminal this afternoon was Millie Stauffer changing a diaper on her baby, Sean. Mrs. Stauffer’s husband, Clair, who teaches telecommuting, was on his way to Dallas. At Lancaster, families can still wait together for flights. Passengers do not go through security until just before they board.
The Stauffers’ other sons, Daniel, 10, and Jared, 3, watched a Cessna being towed in after its landing gear had failed. A pilot had complained of chest pains, and an ambulance had responded. It was, Sergeant DeCola said, an unusually busy day.
Before volunteering for airport duty in October, he was a construction foreman, building gas stations.
Sergeant DeCola, who rotates his shift with two other Guardsmen, has become a welcome presence at the airport. “It makes everyone feel more relaxed, seeing someone in uniform,” said John Juusola, the airport manager for US Airways Express.
At Christmas, Sergeant DeCola, a father of three, handed out candy canes. He and the other Guardsmen hauled in a 16-foot tree and decorated it with red, white and blue ribbons.
He has gotten to know the people who work here, including Brian Seisney, the maintenance man. “I told him, `Man, you keep this place spotless,’ ” Sergeant DeCola said.
Shortly before 7 p.m. he was at his post for the final flight of the day. The 30-passenger plane took off half empty. Sergeant DeCola jumped in the Humvee and headed home.