The good news is Austin Williams, a 15-year-old cancer patient, made it to Washington, D.C. He got his tour of the Smithsonian and the White House and made it in time for his visit with the Dalai Lama.
I know this because I finally reached Johnny Langland.
He and his wife, Suzanne, wrote to and called me a couple of weeks ago when I was on vacation. The e-mail, when I finally got around to it, startled me.
They run Footprints In The Sky, a Denver-based nonprofit that arranges private flights for severely ill people, mostly those with weakened immune systems, who cannot fly commercially.
Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children had contacted Johnny Langland days earlier, seeking a July 8 flight to D.C. for the teen.
Johnny Langland, 64, has been in flight operations for 30 years as a corporate pilot, an instructor, flight department manager and aviation consultant. He knows people.
Finding a private jet for such a trip through Footprints normally takes a couple of weeks. Langland had only two days. But he came through, finding a corporation that was willing to donate its corporate jet and its pilot.
The only condition was that Footprints cover the cost of fuel. And that would cost the nonprofit $4,000.
That is when Johnny Langland called and e-mailed me, asking whether maybe I could put out an appeal.
How it started
All of it goes back 15 years, when one of his flight students at Centennial Airport came to him seeking a favor:
His father was in Casper, Wyo. He was dying. Could he maybe find a plane that could fly his father back to Denver?
Langland knew the owner of a twin-engine Cessna who would let him use the plane if he covered the fuel cost. Langland flew the plane himself.
Every three or four months for the next 13 years, a similar plea would cross his path. Over that time, he built a large network of companies with and owners of private planes.
But it wasn’t until 1996 when his elderly mother, Minnie, needed transport to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., that the idea of focusing on the humanitarian side of aviation struck him.
His mother was desperately ill. She did not survive to make the return trip home to Denver.
On his trip back, in his grief, he realized that the flight to Rochester would have cost him $40,000 had he not known a pilot with a jet, who donated everything.
“Maybe I have been doing this for all these years for a purpose,” he told himself.
He and Suzanne applied for nonprofit status for Footprints in 2009. Today, they average about two calls a day for flights.
The call from the hospital about the teenage boy was different. It wasn’t to take him to a medical facility, which is Footprint’s stock-in-trade. OK, Johnny Langland decided, they would do it.
Donations pour in
He contacted everyone he knew. He went on the radio to appeal for funds. Money began to pour in — $15 here, $200 there.
By July 8, nearly $5,800 had been donated.
That same day, a bad storm moved in over the East coast. They could get Austin Williams as far as Nashville, Tenn., before continuing on the next morning.
It would destroy some of the boy’s plans in D.C.
Instead, a friend of the boy’s family donated nearly 100,000 of her frequent-flier miles. The family left on a United flight that night.
Johnny Langland was in the process of returning the donated money when I reached him.
“It was a project we don’t normally do, and we had never raised a penny before, but so many people came out of so many places,” he said. “I really didn’t want to disappoint them, or anyone.”
He made yet more connections from the experience, he said. More calls now are coming in.
The bad weather that week, he figures, might have been a blessing in disguise. The boy got there on time and got to do everything that had been planned.
“I understand he had a wonderful time,” he said. “You know, that’s really the bottom line.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
