When Gwendolyn Jepsen got the news that her brother’s brain tumor was progressing at an alarming rate, Jepsen didn’t know if she would get the chance to say goodbye in person. Facing unemployment and a recent foreclosure on her home, the mother of two knew she didn’t have the means to make a trip to the hospital in Detroit.

Yet less than a week later, after her husband, Randy, spent three days making more than a dozen phone calls to inquire about assistance, Jepsen was strapped in, wearing a headset and riding at 12,000 feet in the co-pilot seat of a single-engine retractable airplane on her way to give her brother a proper farewell.

“I was financially strapped. I had nothing. But my husband was determined to let me see my brother one last time,” said the La Grange Park resident. 
“Angel Flight made it possible for me to go and see him for a few hours, and that meant the world to us both. The organization should be complimented for what they do for people.”

The Angel Flight Central Organization has logged nearly 5 million miles, helping thousands of families access specialized medical care and make compassionate missions. With the help of 1,000 volunteer pilots, the nonprofit organization, headquartered in Kansas City, Mo., has been matchmaking charitable flights for the past 13 years. AFC passengers must be outpatients, ambulatory and able to sit upright in a standard aircraft seat. The organization also arranges community service and disaster response missions.

Volunteer pilot John Major was flying his plane through 500 feet of cloud coverage with only 1 mile of visibility, but his focus that foggy Friday was more on his passenger than on reaching altitude.

Major had flown in these conditions numerous times during the past 30 years, but this one-and-a-half-hour hop from the DuPage County Airport to Detroit was Jepsen’s first excursion through the clouds on a four-seater airplane. Although shaken by the bumpy, viewless ride — compounded by her fear of heights — Jepsen asked Major a lot of questions and tried to stay focused on her mission.

“The pilot was unbelievable. He was awesome,” Jepsen said. “He explained all about the plane and let me be his co-pilot so I could listen to air traffic control.” 

Major, who has donated his time, money and airplane to AFC for the past five years, has made a strategic habit of explaining the plane’s mechanics to his passengers in an effort to get them to relax. Consequently, the ride becomes more enjoyable for both parties, who are sitting nearly shoulder-to-shoulder in his compact plane.

“Being with the passenger is nice,” Major said. “Once you get up to altitude, you can learn a bit about their story.”

Major said that although he has flown a great deal of people on compassion missions and to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota to receive recurring treatments, there have still been some upbeat jaunts.

“Every once in while, you get a young man on his way to get his last cancer treatment, and you look this hopeful 17-year-old in his eyes and realize he will have the rest of his life ahead of him,” said the Village of Lakewood resident. “That’s a pretty good reason to burn holes in the sky.”

The volunteer pilot looks to his first AFC experience to sum up his feelings for the organization’s efforts. After transporting a 22-year-old mother clutching her 2-month-old baby, who was stricken with hydrocephalus, and wearing a helmet on the way to the Mayo Clinic, he knew he was spending his free time wisely.

“You get back from a flight like that and think, ‘I’m never flying again unless it’s to Mayo,’” said the accountant, who also flies children with terminal illnesses to camp for AFC. “There are a lot of ways to make a difference, but you can really make a difference with an airplane.”

Major felt particularly lucky to be able to pilot Jepson’s compassion mission, as the flight took place right before Christmas last year, and so felt like an appropriate way to spend the holiday, he said. Major’s holiday spirit not only got Jepsen safely to Detroit, but it also paid for her return flight on a commercial airline, as the weather was threatening to strand her in Detroit the night of her return.

Although Jepsen’s brother, Kenneth Quick, died before the end of the year, Jepsen felt a sense of peace surrounding their goodbye.

“He was glad to see me,” Jepsen said. “I told him he was going home.”