Angel Flight, a Virginia-based organization, pairs families that request air travel to medical facilities with pilots who donate their time, aircraft and fuel.
Nelson, 61, a retired Middletown certified public accountant, has served as an Angel Flight ambassador several times, including recently when he flew an Indiana mother and her 9-year-old son to Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
As Nelson prepared for the flight he remembered an Angel Flight involving a severely burned little girl.
He called seeing the girl’s burned body “traumatic” and said he couldn’t take another Angel Flight for six months.
“That was a tough one,” he said.
But last week, Nelson, who earned his pilot’s license when he was 16, was back in his plane.
Nelson said he has accumulated about 3,000 flight hours and averages about 200 hours a year.
Sometimes, he wakes up and takes a 15-minute flight from Middletown to Urbana for breakfast.
Instead, last week, he ate lunch in Pittsburgh.
“It’s my civic duty,” he said when asked why he volunteers. “There’s something special about being in a plane and knowing that you’re helping someone.”
Joshua Nelson is 9, and so far, his summer has been perfect.
When your wardrobe consists of shorts, T-shirts and gym shoes — and your hair is cut shorter than a putting green — it can’t get better than afternoons filled with swimming, golfing and kicking a soccer ball.
He’s all boy.
But last week, Joshua’s Summer Tour of 2010 was interrupted by an airplane ride.
Not to Disney World, Myrtle Beach or even Washington, D.C.
To Pittsburgh.
To visit his surgeons at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
The Nelsons — Tom and Kim and their children, Vicki, 10, and Joshua — live in Evansville, Ind.
On Tuesday, June 22, Joshua and his mother were flown from there to Hook Field in Middletown by pilot Vince Corrado, of Phillipsburg as part of Angel Flight, which provides free air transportation to patients across the United States.
Pilots volunteer to fly missions and provide their airplane and fuel at no cost to the patient and family. Its motto is: “the shortest distance between home and hope.”
After a short layover at Hook Field, Kim and Joshua were then flown to Pittsburgh by Sam Nelson, no relation. When Sam Nelson saw their last names matched, he volunteered for the flight.
“We have to be related somewhere,” he said with a smile while completing his flight plan in the airport’s terminal.
Nelson has been a pilot for 45 years, and he has flown several Angel Flight trips.
“It’s a fabulous thing what these guys do,” Kim Nelson said. “There really are good people in this world.”
Instead of having to make the nine-hour drive from home to hospital, it took the Nelsons less than three hours to arrive.
Joshua, diagnosed with autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease, was scheduled to be hospitalized from Wednesday through Saturday. Eventually, Joshua may face liver or kidney transplant surgery, his mother said.
His mother appreciated the flight because it meant she wouldn’t have to drive home, especially after a three- or four-day hospital visit when sleep will be as easy to get as a tasty meal.
She said flying “greatly reduces the stress.”
Then she added: “It’s truly a blessing. I can’t say enough.”
Joshua called the flight from Indiana to Middletown “pretty neat.”
Then the Nelsons grabbed their luggage, and made their way toward Nelson’s Mooney 252 plane for the 80-minute ride to Pittsburgh. He opened the door, and asked who wanted to sit in the front seat.
Joshua Nelson just smiled. He was a kid again.
Contact this columnist at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.
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