The Boston Parents Paper
2010 Family Advocate of the Year

Angel Flight Northeast Gives Patients and Their Families a Much-Needed Lift

By Deirdre Wilson

Michael Carr, 6, of Jamestown, N.Y., naps en route to Children's Hospital in Boston via Angel Flight Northeast for treatment of a rare lung disease. Photo courtesy of Angel Flight NE

Each year, the Boston Parents Paper honors the people and organizations that work selflessly – and often behind the scenes – to help Massachusetts families in need. We do this with our Family Advocate Awards.

Usually, we recognize three or four advocates per year – a person who has helped a family recover from a devastating house fire, a longtime volunteer teaching at-risk kids to read, or an organization guiding families of kids with special needs through a maze of related laws and services.

This year, we’ve taken a different tack and selected just one Family Advocate – one incredible organization that stands out for the work it does every day helping children, parents and families when they need it most. Read on to learn how Angel Flight Northeast goes above and beyond for families across Massachusetts, New England and the Northeast.

A Frantic Call

Late on a Friday afternoon last summer, Angel Flight Northeast (NE) co-founder Larry Camerlin and his staff were about to head home for the weekend. The phone rang with a call from a distraught mother in Albany, N.Y., begging for help. Her 13-year-old daughter suffered from a rare illness and her condition had deteriorated so badly that she was being “med-flighted” from an Albany medical center to Children’s Hospital in Boston.

Because medical specialists had to accompany the girl on the plane, there was no room for the mom. “She was hysterical,” Camerlin recalls. “She wanted to be at Children’s when her daughter arrived, but it was hours away by car.”

Camerlin’s staff immediately began making phone calls to try to locate a pilot in Albany who could fly the woman directly to Logan International Airport in Boston. As a backup, Camerlin also got a plane ready at Lawrence Municipal Airport in North Andover, where Angel Flight NE is based. When no pilots were immediately available in Albany, Camerlin himself flew to New York, picked up the mother and brought her back to Logan.

“She had no money with her; she was just frantic,” he says. “So I gave her $30 for a cab ride to the hospital. I gave her my home number, my cell number and I told her to call me if she needed anything else, that I would do whatever she needed.”

The woman arrived at Children’s Hospital a full 90 minutes before her daughter (Albany medical staff had to first stabilize the girl for the med-flight, so it took a little longer). “The mom was able to meet the medical staff at Children’s, give a history of her daughter’s illness, get something to eat and be there waiting when her daughter arrived,” Camerlin says.

That kind of service is typical of Angel Flight Northeast, our 2010 Family Advocate of the Year. The organization flies children, adults (and family members) from all over New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania to hospitals, clinics and life-saving medical care hundreds of miles from their homes. For a seriously ill child in Maine, it means a two-hour round-trip flight to Boston for medical treatment a couple times a week instead of a full day’s drive back and forth each time.

And it’s all done free of charge.

With more than 1,000 volunteer pilots, their own personal planes, and a dozen office staff members who handle everything from fielding phone calls to coordinating flight schedules and raising funds, this Angel Flight chapter (there are others across the country) is a place to turn for relief from the financial burdens of a serious illness.

From Ambulance to Airplane

Camerlin started Angel Flight Northeast with a good friend, retired Winchester Hospital CEO Gene Lubier, in 1996. An EMT and Franciscan Friar trained in hospital ministry, Camerlin had just sold a successful local ambulance business and was casting about for something new and rewarding to do. He read about an Angel Flight chapter in California, and he and Lubier discovered there was nothing like it in New England.

“They desperately needed someone to start one here,” Camerlin says. “I had just gotten my pilot’s license and I had a significant background in health care ministry and being an EMT.”

What he wasn’t prepared for was the struggle to raise money for a new nonprofit organization funded entirely through donations. “Everyone kept saying, ‘Larry, you don’t want to do this; you’ll be working 24 hours a day trying to raise money. But I felt it wasn’t just something I wanted to do – it was something I had to do,” Camerlin says. In one year, he and Lubier raised $1 million from individual donors, corporate sponsorships, events and private foundation grants. They recruited private pilots from across the Northeast – people who flew for pleasure and were looking for new reasons to be up in the air, using their planes and their flying skills.

These days, Angel Flight NE completes 80 to 100 charitable flights a week, and about 3,300 a year. The organization generally flies within the Northeast, and if a passenger needs to travel further, they fly that person to connecting flights with the nation’s other Angel Flight chapters. An Earth Angels organization uses volunteers to drive patients or their family members to medical appointments once they land at area airports.

Pilots – Not Patients – Pay the Fare

The most astounding thing about Angel Flight Northeast is that its pilots donate their time, personal plane and flight costs (fuel, maintenance, etc.) to the cause. Fuel alone can cost $400 to $600 for a single flight.

Because of this, Camerlin notes, the decision to fly for Angel Flight is not just the pilot’s. “The reason they do this – and it’s a family decision because of the cost and time involved – is that they’re committed to giving back,” he says.

All pilots must have completed hundreds of hours of flight time, have some cross-country flight experience and be skilled flying in bad weather. Because the pilots are usually hobbyists, not professionals with commercial airlines, Angel Flight mandates a rigorous training program (beyond what’s required for a pilot’s license), conducts biennial flight reviews and ensures that its pilots fly fairly regularly to begin with.

Lyndon Holmes owns a local software company, lives in North Andover with his wife, and flies for Angel Flight NE once or twice a week. It translates to thousands of dollars in donated time, fuel and plane maintenance costs. A native of Surry, England, Holmes is well-liked by patients and Angel Flight staff for his charm, sense of humor and calm demeanor. He’s also a stickler for flying accuracy.

“I like to grade myself after each flight to see if I’ve followed all the rules and required routines,” says Holmes, an avid pilot since 1999. “If I don’t fly once a week, I start getting itchy.”