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- May 29, 2014
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Kayoh@190
I don't normally start threads because you guys have much more interesting stories than I do, but I got a chance to do something yesterday that was pretty friggin' incredible, and I thought I'd share.
The Gary Sinise Foundation has been involved with a program called Snowball Express for last few years. Supporting the kids of Fallen Heroes, Snowball Express has been going on for about a decade now, and my employer provides airplanes to get the kids to the retreat destination - this year being Disney World. I've been at my airline for almost 6 years, and each year I've volunteered to be part of this but not selected. We have hundreds of pilots volunteer (I heard it was 800 this time around!) for only a few dozen spots across 13 airplanes, so when I got the phone call to fly a couple of weeks back, I was stoked. I knew it was going to be awesome, but I wasn't prepared for how special it would be.
Friday evening I was flown to Detroit to meet up with the rest of the crew, and Saturday morning we got up early to decorate the interior of the airplane. We were to take a bunch of kids and their families from DTW to JFK, pick up more kids at JFK (many flown in from international destinations), fly down to ORF to pick up another group of kids, and finally the airplane would head down to MCO to drop everyone off. Another crew would fly the ORF-MCO leg (and then take the plane empty back to ORD) - with such a long list of volunteers they wanted to limit us to 2 legs each.
It's hard to express how awesome the entire experience was - Channel 11 in NYC covered our JFK stop here (watch the video):
https://www.pix11.com/news/snowball-express-brings-joy-support-to-families-of-fallen-heroes
The kids got off the plane at JFK to take part in the festivities and were greeted at the gate by all branches of military standing at attention, veterans groups, a bagpipe band, members of the NY police and fire departments - it was incredible. They all started clapping as the kids stepped off the jetbridge. I've never been much of a crier, but the crew and I were walking behind the line of kids, and as I stepped into the gate area, I ended up retreating back into the jetbridge to get my s*** together. I wasn't alone - my Captain was there doing the same thing.
Incidentally Sean (from the video above) wants to be an airline pilot. I'm still waiting on the pictures, but during the JFK stop I threw a yellow vest on Sean, found a mechanic with an escort badge, and we did the walk around together. He loved it, and even Santa came down to help.
Anyway, sorry for the long post. It was just really, *really* friggin' cool. Highlight of my career, and will likely remain that way.
The Gary Sinise Foundation has been involved with a program called Snowball Express for last few years. Supporting the kids of Fallen Heroes, Snowball Express has been going on for about a decade now, and my employer provides airplanes to get the kids to the retreat destination - this year being Disney World. I've been at my airline for almost 6 years, and each year I've volunteered to be part of this but not selected. We have hundreds of pilots volunteer (I heard it was 800 this time around!) for only a few dozen spots across 13 airplanes, so when I got the phone call to fly a couple of weeks back, I was stoked. I knew it was going to be awesome, but I wasn't prepared for how special it would be.
Friday evening I was flown to Detroit to meet up with the rest of the crew, and Saturday morning we got up early to decorate the interior of the airplane. We were to take a bunch of kids and their families from DTW to JFK, pick up more kids at JFK (many flown in from international destinations), fly down to ORF to pick up another group of kids, and finally the airplane would head down to MCO to drop everyone off. Another crew would fly the ORF-MCO leg (and then take the plane empty back to ORD) - with such a long list of volunteers they wanted to limit us to 2 legs each.
It's hard to express how awesome the entire experience was - Channel 11 in NYC covered our JFK stop here (watch the video):
https://www.pix11.com/news/snowball-express-brings-joy-support-to-families-of-fallen-heroes
The kids got off the plane at JFK to take part in the festivities and were greeted at the gate by all branches of military standing at attention, veterans groups, a bagpipe band, members of the NY police and fire departments - it was incredible. They all started clapping as the kids stepped off the jetbridge. I've never been much of a crier, but the crew and I were walking behind the line of kids, and as I stepped into the gate area, I ended up retreating back into the jetbridge to get my s*** together. I wasn't alone - my Captain was there doing the same thing.
Incidentally Sean (from the video above) wants to be an airline pilot. I'm still waiting on the pictures, but during the JFK stop I threw a yellow vest on Sean, found a mechanic with an escort badge, and we did the walk around together. He loved it, and even Santa came down to help.
Anyway, sorry for the long post. It was just really, *really* friggin' cool. Highlight of my career, and will likely remain that way.
