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he is also an official, licensed, instrumentrated
pilot.
There is a term in the aviation community
known as the “$100 hamburger.”
This is when a pilot flies a short distance,
enjoys a nice meal at that destination, and
then flies back home. When Jeff first got
his license, he and Cynthia made a couple
of $100 hamburger trips. They also took
the plane to visit family in other states.
They went on some vacations. Jeff’s
childhood dream had come true. He was
a pilot. But still, something was missing.
“You very quickly run out of decent
reasons to fly,” he explained. One day Jeff
was at the Tire Depot having that very
conversation with a customer. Jeff’s
ponderings ultimately came down to this:
“What do I do, now?”
That customer told Jeff about “Pilots
N Paws,” an organization through which
volunteer pilots fly transport and rescue
missions for animals. Curious, Jeff looked
into the program and signed up for a
mission. “I was just amazed, so I went on
there and picked up a transport—a puppy
going from Shreveport, Louisiana, to
Columbus, Georgia.”
He signed up for many more missions
after that in which he transported a variety
of dogs. And on one unique occasion,
he actually transported lemurs. The
experience was rejuvenating. Jeff sought
out other ways in which he could volunteer
his ability to fly planes. That is when he
learned about Angel Flight Missions—
an organization that serves ambulatory
medical patients with free flights to and
from medical treatment.
Jeff flies for the Angel Flight Soars
division, which covers Mississippi,
Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North and
South Carolina. Jeff has been an Angel
Flight volunteer for 3 years now. He has
flown over 50 missions and counting.
“I got into this really looking for a
reason to fly. A justification to fly,” Jeff
explained. “And what I found is I love
flying volunteer missions—it occurred to
me on a trip like an epiphany.”
Jeff had just flown a surgery patient to
Dallas. That night, he was flying back by
himself. It was 9 o’clock, a crystal-clear
night with a nice tail wind.
“I’m sitting there thinking, ‘how did I
get from the Philippines to up here in an
airplane at 10,000 feet? How am I the guy
that gets to do this as a volunteer mission?’”
During that flight, Jeff thought through
all the things that had to happen in his life
for him to be exactly where he was in that
moment and realized, “This is no accident.”
Currently, Jeff finds himself in a
position where he’s no longer asking,
“What do I do, now?” Friends often ask
if he wants to fly planes for a living. His
answer is always no.
“This is my hobby. It’s the opposite of
work for me,” he explained.
Jeff recently flew an 18-hour mission.
He left his home at 6:00 a.m. and returned
home that evening at midnight. “It was a
long day, but I was refreshed,” Jeff said.
“That’s what it does for me. It’s mentally
refreshing.”
Jeff always knew he needed to fly. It was
an inherent desire that began when he was
that little boy in the Philippines, totally
and completely captivated by airplanes.
Years later, he learned that the world
needed him to fly, too. l
Hometown madison • 55