Compassion at 6,500 Feet

Harvey Engen reaches beneath the wing of the Cessna 421C and collects a sample of fuel in a glass vial. “No water bubbles. Looks good,” he says.

The plane’s engine could misfire if there is condensed water in the fuel line. And there was good reason to suspect it: the night before, temperatures had dipped near to zero. Engen and a friend had worked for hours to remove ice from the wings and control surfaces. This morning there is a chilling north wind. But with a fuzzy purple haze softening the hard-edged blue sky, it’s a good day for flying.

Another pilot strides out to the plane with last-minute instructions. “Remember, Harvey,” he shouts into the wind, “if the houses start getting bigger, pull up.”

Harvey smiles: it’s an old joke for the two pilots, who together have logged some 39,000 hours in the air.

But this flight is different from most. Harvey settles into the cockpit, starts the Cessna’s twin engines, and waits for them to warm up. He taxis the craft to the runway.

“Baltimore, clearance delivery. Cessna 421 Romeo Alpha at Gaithersburg, ready to copy, IFR Pittsburgh.”

In Pittsburgh, a welfare mother and her baby, born three months premature, are waiting for Harvey to fly them back to their home in Washington, D.C. As Harvey takes the plane up to a cruising altitude of 6,500 feet, he consults the air map in his lap and sets his bearings. He seems intense. “Compared to flying 747s,” he says, “this is hard work. You’ve got to do everything yourself.”

For 34 years Harvey has flown commercial planes all over the world. In less than a month he will retire to devote full time to flying smaller planes (with names like Golden Eagle, Baron, and Bonanza) around the country.

Harvey is one of 18 veteran pilots who fly with Washington Aviation Ministry (WAM), an organization that began as a service to Christian leaders who needed to make quick trips from one speaking engagement to another, WAM still makes those flights, but lately it has begun responding to other, more pressing concerns—the needs of people who must be transported because of a medical emergency but cannot afford the steep bill of commerical air ambulances.

With good reason, WAM’s volunteer pilots have been dubbed “high-tech Good Samaritans.” Just the week before, WAM flew an 18-year-old girl with an inoperable brain tumor from Baltimore to Charleston. She wanted to die at home with her family. Earlier, a 47-year-old burn patient had been transported from Wilmington, Delaware, to Lexington, Kentucky, for treatment.

Harvey found out about WAM last year through his son, Steve, who was looking for a ministry in which he could use his skills as a pilot or airplane mechanic. The organization was short on pilots and planes and asked Steve and his father to help out.

Harvey recalls with a smile, “I had never heard of WAM. I thought they might be crooks. So we decided to give ’em ten days.” Ten days turned into a month as father and son flew Harvey’s Beech Baron on WAM flights. The next step seemed obvious: Harvey sold the Baron and bought the largest twin-engine plane he could find. Then he leased it back to WAM at cost to be used mostly for medical emergencies. “It was God’s plan,” Harvey says. “I certainly couldn’t have planned it.”

The plane that Harvey bought bumps onto the runway in Pittsburgh and taxis toward an ambulance waiting with its headlights on. As Harvey parks the plane, paramedics open the back of the ambulance. Icy gusts tugging at their white pants legs, they slowly pull out a 350-pound portable life-support system called an Isolet. Inside the mechanical womb, a tiny, dark-brown infant lies on its stomach, warm and unperturbed.

A young black woman, Shauna, steps from the ambulance. Shivering in a short jacket, she talks shyly about her son’s birth. In the Pittsburgh area visiting relatives, she had gone into labor the day before she was to return to Washington. At first, doctors had been doubtful her son would live—his weight had dipped below two pounds—but seven weeks after his birth he was up to 2.6 pounds. Still, doctors have been unable to wean him from the respirator.

“His name is Kwan,” Shauna says softly. “I’ve taken pictures of him so when he grows up he’ll know how he started. When they struggle for their lives, they’re stronger later on.”

Shauna is told that a Christian businessman in Washington is paying the cost of transporting her and Kwan back to Washington. She looks surprised. “Can I write to him? Please tell him, thank you very much.”

She watches as two paramedics lift the Isolet into the plane and climb in after it. Then Shauna gets in along with her social worker and a reporter. Harvey is already in the cockpit—silent, concentrating. Directly behind his pilot’s seat is the Isolet. The paramedics hover over the miniature infant, no longer than a man’s foot. They check the tubes that run from his mouth and nose and the wires taped with circular patches to his tiny chest. There is a quiver beneath the skin: his heartbeat.

He is crying, or appears to be. The top of the Isolet is open but because of the respirator tubes, Kwan makes no sound. A paramedic’s large hands reach in to massage Kwan’s wrinkled skin, aiding circulation. Shauna, seated in the back of the plane, looks on intently.

Harvey talks into the radio as the plane nears Washington’s National Airport. He brings the Cessna down gently, with scarcely a bump. Another ambulance sits waiting near the door of the terminal, along with local news reporters who had learned of WAM’s unusual ministry. A reporter presses forward to interview Shauna as she climbs down from the plane. “So how does it feel to finally be home?”

“At one point, I didn’t know how my son would get back home,” Shauna says, smiling. “I still can’t believe it.”

Harvey slips out of the crowd, but a reporter from a suburban newspaper finds him. “This is a Christian group, right? You must be a very religious person to do this,” the reporter says. Harvey replies simply, “I think we should help people, especially hurting families.”

Kwan is being loaded into the back of the ambulance, and his mother begins to move away from the reporters. Shauna climbs in the front seat and pulls the door closed against the questions and the cold. As the ambulance pulls away, she turns and waves.

Postscript: One day after the flight from Pittsburgh, doctors at Children’s Hospital in Washington succeeded in getting Kwan off the respirator. His mother reports, “He’s breathing on his own, eating fine, and growing to be big.”

By Kelsey Menehan, a free-lance writer living in Bethesda, Maryland.

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