Angels, as just about any child will tell you, have wings. If you ask Vero Beach residents Mary Butler, her son Donald, her grandson, Thomas or fellow Vero resident, Leroy Jackson, they might also tell you angels have propellers and landing gear and look more like a Piper Seneca or a Cherokee 6 aircraft than the angels you see depicted in stained glass windows.
That’s because their angels belong to Angel Flight Southeast, a non-profit member of the Air Charity Network, the largest charitable aviation organization in the country. Serving all 50 states with some 40,000 flights annually through eight regional groups, pilots for ACN and its affiliated Angel Flight or Mercy Flight groups donate their aircraft, fuel and time to provide free air transportation to people who need life-saving medical care. For 31 years, that has been Angel Flight Southeast’s mission.
“Angel Flight Southeast,” says its CEO Steve Purello, “relies on a network of more than 650 private pilots right here in Florida. Our team of ‘care traffic controllers,’ arrange for approximately 3,000 flights here each year.”
Serving all of the Sunshine State as well as the Bahamas, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, Angel Flight Southeast is not an emergency medivac kind of service. They don’t land at accident scenes, snatch up the injured and fly them off to emergency rooms, but they save lives, nonetheless.
As Purello explains “we’re dealing with people who have unique or life-threatening illnesses but the best facilities to treat them are hundreds of miles away.”
Generally Angel Flight Southeast has a maximum range of about 1,000 miles for transporting patients. That can lead to some complex logistical problems for those “care traffic controllers.” For example, Purello continues, a flight from Vero to New York City’s Sloan Kettering Cancer Center might involve three to six aircraft and an equal number of pilots. It also means coordinating with Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic and Angel Flight Northeast and their pilots, arranging flight schedules, meeting times, passenger transfers, ground transportation and re-fueling stops. All that takes time.
There is, according to Purello, really only one kind of Angel Flight where speed is absolutely essential and that’s when organ transplants are involved. “Usually we only have about three hours to get someone to their destination or the organ is no longer viable,” he explains, and if that organ is hundreds of miles away and it’s one o’clock in the morning, driving or commercial air travel simply aren’t options.
Marc Snell, the president of SNL Corporation of Sebastian, is one of Angel Flight Southeast’s pilots. The 56-year-old Snell started flying in 1991 and by 2001 he began working with Angel Flight. In 2003 he was named pilot-of-the-year for the group. Today, when an email comes in from Angel Flight, Snell might just put his wholesale fishing tackle business on hold, head to the Sebastian Municipal Airport and get his Piper Seneca ready for takeoff. Or, as he puts it, “do something really useful” with the twin-engine aircraft.
Local attorneys, H. Randal “Randy” Brennan of Brennan and Kretschmer and Louis “Buck” Vocelle of Vocelle and Berg are two more Angel Flight Southeast pilots. Together they co-own a single engine Piper Cherokee 6. The two legal eagles share Snell’s passion for Angel Flight.
“Sometimes,” Vocelle says, “people ask me why I’d give up all that time and spend all that money to make these flights. I tell them if they have to ask, they’re never going to get it. Angel Flight is a very worthwhile organization. You get to meet some wonderful and very grateful people.”
Brennan, a certified mediator as well as an active attorney echoes Vocelle’s sentiments. “It’s a great way,” he says enthusiastically, “to use your flying skills and plane for the good of the community.” He also points out that Vero itself is all but devoid of any transportation alternatives for those in need. Brennan has offered his services to Angel Flight for the past 10 years.
If saving lives constitutes “something really useful” then Snell, Brennan, Vocelle and their fellow pilots with Angel Flight have hit the jackpot.
Consider the Butler family.
Back in 2008, the family moved to Vero Beach because they believed their son, Donald, was dying. After 12 years of dialysis and kidney disease, according to his mother, Mary, “Donny wanted to die by the sea.” Within weeks of moving here a complex and terrifying series of events began to unfold.
In rapid succession Mary Butler’s grandson, Thomas, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and needed immediate surgery at Shand hospital in Gainesville. Shortly thereafter, Mary was involved in an automobile accident, suffering traumatic brain injuries that also required surgery. Then Mary’s son, Donald, had to make three separate flights to hospitals all over the state with potential kidney matches. The first two didn’t pan out. The third did. However, even after the transplant, he still needed to get from Vero to Gainesville three times a week for post-transplant anti-rejection treatments.
In each and every instance, Angel Flight Southeast spread its wings and quite literally flew to the rescue taking all three family members to and from the medical care they needed. In total, Angel Flights Southeast arranged some 15 flights for the Butler family.
(According to Mary Butler, her grandson, Thomas, is now “cancer-free.” Moreover, she claims she has no ill effects from her accident or surgery while Donald Butler’s kidney transplant, in her words, “has been an awesome success.” She then adds that “without Angel Flight, three people [in this family) would be dead now.”]
Then there’s Leroy Jackson, also of Vero Beach. Jackson has been fighting colon cancer for well over a year and still needs to get clear across the state to the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa to continue his battle. Angel Flight has been there for him, as well.
While flying was a novel experience for Jackson when Angel Flight Southeast first came into his life he now says he “loves it” and it’s not just the airplane ride. “These people,” Jackson states firmly, “have nothing but love. They really care. I just put myself in God’s hands and Angel Flight’s hands and I don’t get nervous at all.”
One-third of the Air Charity Network flights nationwide are for children while two-thirds are for adults and senior citizens suffering from a variety of different illnesses, challenges and personal crises.
The nationwide network also arranges “flights of compassion” including travel for military personnel and their immediate families as well as flights for disaster relief.
ACN and Angel Flight Southeast depend on donations to cover the many costs associated with matching passengers in need with charitable aviation resources. To help meet the need, the family of the late Dr. Franklin Norris, a former U.S. Air Force combat pilot and noted thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon in Orlando, created a foundation to help support Angel Flight Southeast.
This April 10-11 that foundation will host a fundraising golf tournament at the Madison Green Golf Club in West Palm Beach. According to Purello, “Each dollar raised generates more than five dollars’ worth of flight services for people in need.”
For more information about Angel Flight Southeast, its upcoming tournament or to learn if they can help you or if you can help them, visit www.angelflightse.org or call 1-800-352-4256.
