AAI volunteers on their way to meet kids in ORD!

 It’s been a busy two weeks. First, retired DFWAA flight attendant Janice Freeman accompanied two 15 year old girls from CDG to CMH for donated medical care. Then Debbie Baird and Shenae Johnson, both from DFW Res took little 4 year old Ma back to CDG and handed her over to an ASF escort for the final leg of her journey home to Abidjan after a recheck of her retinablastoma surgery. Makayla Mickelle, DFWAA flight attendant did her very first escort since joining the program when she took Ma from CMH to PHL where they met up with Debbie and Shenae. Now that Makayla’s feet are wet. we hope she’ll be doing some of our longer trips in the future. And speaking of that, this was only Shenae’s second escort ever but Debbie is very experienced so she was able to show Shenae exactly what is involved with our CDG trips. They had a quick visit to CDG, then brought two little medical patients back. PHLAA flight attendant Betty Taylor met them in CLT and took little Glorias on to PHL  ORD AA flight attendant Kyle Rogers also did a CDG trip, taking a 4 year old from CMH back to CDG and bringing a baby back to CMH. The CMH/CDG shuttle was very much in full swing during these two weeks. Joanne Striker accompanied Ahmad, a teenager from Jordan, from LHR to STL where he would have a re-fitting of his prosthetic leg.

June 26th we again accompanied 11 Ukrainian orphans to their host families throughout the US. A huge thank you to those escorts, Ken Nettles, Tammy Meade and Tamara Bessette, Stephanie Jasper,  Rosie Plog, Cindi Sinkler, Tej LIntala, Shawn Noblit,  Mary Rhoden Lobban, Sheila Svoboda and Dorothy Olson. ORD flight attendant Soad Hamdan was the airport coordinator for this group and all her hard work made the entire afternoon and evening run exceptionally well. We could not have done it without her. Nor could we have done it without ORD Flight Service. Claire Madden and Karen Parker both helped us in so many different ways and because of the private room they were able to secure for us, we had a nice place for the kids to wait, many of them for long hours before their connecting flights left. We were sad that, at the last minute,  the Polish government decided that more paperwork was needed before the Polish orphans would be allowed to travel.