This article appeared in the St. John's Telegram. I think it illustrates an important quality found in Newfoundlanders but lacking in a lot of places. Living in the USA really opens up your eyes to racism especially coming from small town Newfoundland . Newfoundland is definitely not a multicultural province but when faced with people different than us or with culture unfamiliar to us, we tend to treat them like people and no different than anyone else. Celebrity also means little to us Newfoundlanders which is why Kevin Spacey sent his bodyguards home when filing the Shipping News in Newfoundland (he did not need them as no one bothered him). It is not that Newfoundlanders did not know who he was (hell we have all seen "The Usual Suspects" at least) but we just did not care. He actually appreciated that . Here is the story as it appeared in the Telegram

Lanier Phillips left St. John’s on Saturday having shared, once more, his story of the kindness and compassion he encountered from the people of St. Lawrence over six dec-ades ago — people, he says, who not only saved his life but also changed it completely.

Phillips was the only African-American among the 55 people whose lives were saved when the USS Truxtun crashed off the coast of St. Lawrence during a blizzard on Feb. 18, 1942.

Had he not been aboard the naval destroyer on that fateful day when 101 people lost their lives, Phillips has no idea where life would have led him. There were only two options, he says: hell or jail.

• • •

The interview takes place in a small, bright, comfortable room in the bed and breakfast where Phillips is staying in St. John’s.

His voice lowers to a whisper when he speaks of crawling under his bed as a young boy in fear of the Ku Klux Klan who were riding through the community shooting guns into the air.

“On one occasion, I could peep out through my window and see them beat this black man with whips. The hatred just rose up in me. And I had terrible ideas. But the people in St. Lawrence erased all of that. … They cured that disease of hatred. It is a disease. And the best way in the world to cure that is with love and humanity. It’s the best medicine there is.”

At age 18, Phillips was one of four black mess attendants onboard the Truxtun. There was also one Philippine mess attendant, he says.

His earliest memory of the shipwreck was of being thrown out of his bunk.

“I landed on top of the rest of the mess attendants who were thrown out of their bunks… I thought we had been torpedoed. I just grabbed a pair of shoes, I don’t know if they were my shoes or someone else’s. And I ran topside. But it was dark and I couldn’t see anything,” he recalls.

Phillips’ heart sank when searchlights shone over the area showed snow-covered cliffs and mountains. He was convinced he’d been shipwrecked in Iceland. Any black man to step on the land in that country at the time, he recalls, would be lynched.

“The storm was so bad you could barely see. The waves would just pick the ship up and slam it against the rocks.… I went onboard a raft, but the other mess attendants were afraid to go over the side.… I had looked at the men who were washed overboard from the waves. They were being crashed against the rocks close by. It was so terrific you could see body parts flying by. But I knew the ship was going to sink once it broke apart.”

Philips said while the four other mess attendants were terrified they’d be lynched on Iceland shores because of the colour of their skin, he chose to take his chances.

“I told them, ‘Gee, if we die at least let’s just don’t stay here and freeze to death.’ Ice was forming on all our bodies by then.”

That was the last conversation he’d have with his shipmates who refused to abandon ship.

“Just before we reached the land, the raft capsized and threw everybody out in the water. … We were already wet. Now we were so numb we could barely move. … It seemed like the heart rate had slowed down and you were very sleepy, extremely sleepy. You knew that all you had to do was close your eyes and it was all over.”

By the time he reached the shore, still believing he was in Iceland, Phillips had convinced himself dying was a better fate than living.

“I decided to go in the corner and end it all. And I did. I went back into this little small cove. Not too much larger than this room. I got down

on the ground but someone came

and said, ‘Don’t lie there, you’ll surely die.’ ”

Phillips, still covered in bunker C oil, was eventually taken into shelter with the white survivors, where the women of St. Lawrence worked to save each and every life.

Having grown up in a society where racism was as popular as slavery, the teenager was sure his life was about to end in some horrible way.

“When I got my eyes opened, I saw these ladies, they were massaging my body, getting the circulation going. … I was completely naked and I was really afraid. … Being from rural Georgia, it was a crime to be naked in front of white women — to even look at white women, or whistle at one, was a crime. Maybe you’d be lynched for it. And I was terrified.”

As they cleaned the oil from his face and head, the women began to comment on the texture of his hair.

“I had a lot of hair then, and one of the ladies said, ‘This is the curliest hair I’ve ever seen.’’ I said to myself, ‘Now that’s the end of me. They’re going to throw me out in the ice all naked. I’m finished. I’m dead.’ ”

With every stroke of their wash cloths, the women continued to offer the frightened young man comfort, compassion and reassurance.

“One of the ladies had my hand and was trying to get the bunker C oil off me. It was like jelly. And she says, ‘This poor fellow, I can’t get it off. It’s all in his pores.’ That’s the first time I spoke up. I said, ‘It’s the colour of the skin. You can’t get it off. I’m black.”

Sixty-four years later, Phillips words are still laced with the gratitude he felt for the women who continued to care for him, oblivious to the colour of his skin.

“They lifted my head up and they had a spoon and was giving me rum, I think it was rum. I had a hard time swallowing. … They kept rubbing my throat and caressing my forehead and another lady kept rubbing my body and washing it off. I was just overcome. … I had never heard such kind words from a white person before.”

Phillips was eventually taken to the Pike home where Viola Pike put him to bed and began heating rocks and irons to place underneath the blankets.

“She said, ‘I made some soup for you.’ She lifted my head, but I couldn’t hold the cup. My fingers were … I couldn’t hardly bend them. She just fed me like a baby with a teaspoon. And I was just overwhelmed.”

When Phillips returned to St. Lawrence in 1988, the woman who’d help nurse him back to health had passed away.

“That house brought back a lot of memories and I felt so bad that she was deceased and I couldn’t thank her.”

Phillips says nothing he could

do could thank the people of St. Lawrence for what they did for him. Nonetheless, he has started a scholarship and has donated financially to the community.

• • •

Growing up in rural Georgia, Phillips said he always knew his place as a young black boy. He’d attended school for about three weeks when the Klan burned it to the ground.

By the time he’d reached his teens, his mother had sent him to Tennessee to live with an aunt. That’s when he decided to join the navy, though he couldn’t read or write.

“I wanted to get away from the south because I resented the racism and the discrimination. I resented the cotton fields and the cornfields. … I resented the granite pits.”

The role of black men in the navy at the time was to serve the white officers their meals, make their beds and shine their shoes.

“I guess what’s why they called us mess attendants.”

Phillips spent 20 years in the navy, becoming the U.S. Navy’s first African-American sonar technician. He married and raised a family and continued working as a sonar technician in later years.

He has done many meaningful things in his lifetime. He’s marched with Martin Luther King. He’s fought for civil rights for decades. He’s told his story about the people of St. Lawrence to anyone who would listen.

While the people in his hometown have come a long way over the years in eradicating racism, there’s still a master-slave mentality there, he says. Those people never met the people of St. Lawrence.

“I know within my heart if I continue to resist the wrong of racism that, some day, I’ll overcome. I know that today is better than yesterday. But I want tomorrow to be better than today … and there are people that still hold on to the plantation mentality, to not resist and not talk about it.

“But I’m going to talk about it. And I don’t care whose toes I step on. Because it’s wrong. … We are all God’s children and we’re all human. If we could just learn to treat people like the people of St. Lawrence treated me, how sweet the world would be.”