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Tuesday, August 12, 2008 --- 114 days ago http://www.patriotledger.com/news/x1570385156/MISSIONS-OF-MERCY-Angel-Flight-ope
| Editors Note: This story was first published in The Patriot Ledger on Friday October 12, 2001 . The drive to Boston would be 318 miles for Lorraine Acker of Nanticoke, Pa., whose 17-year-old daughter, Rachel, is a patient at the Shriners Burns Institute in Boston. It would be more than 220 miles once every six weeks for the family of Lyndsie Diamond, 14, a Massachusetts General Hospital cancer patient from Glens Falls, N.Y. It would be, if not for men such as Justin "Jay" Strauss, a retired military pilot. Leaving from T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, R.I., Strauss flies as far south as Virginia to pick up sick children and their families and takes them where they need to go. He does it for free, as one of more than 700 pilots with the charity organization Angel Flight Northeast. He and other Angel Flight pilots pay the cost of the flights, but it is worth it, Strauss said. "It's one of the few charities you can be involved in where you know exactly where your work went," he said. Angel Flight, founded in 1996, last year provided about 1,600 free trips, usually to shuttle people who needed medical treatment. Pilots also transport organs and blood. Angel Flight is based at the Lawrence Municipal Airport in North Andover, but pilots fly from all over the region, including Marshfield, Plymouth and Norwood. "It makes the trip so much easier for us," said Lyndsie Diamond's father, Jack. "This would be a four-hour drive, and it would be v ... |
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