Wings of Hope - Where Retirement is a Good Thing

April 7, 2011--The Wings of Hope hanger at Spirit of St. Louis Airport is full of airplanes being repaired by volunteers. Wings of Hope flies to over 150 bases in 42 countries. The Cesna 175 (back right) will be going to Paraguay in about two months. Emily Rasinski erasinski@post-dispatch.com

Retired aerospace workers keep Wings of Hope aloft

BY STEVE GIEGERICH • sgiegerich@post-dispatch.com > 314-340-8172 | Posted: Sunday, April 10, 2011 12:10 am

A decade after retirement, former Boeing sheet metal worker Ray "Herbe" Herberger maintains a seamless bond with flying machines.

But these days, in a departure from the military jets he worked on for three decades, Herberger labors over single- and twin-prop engine planes flown by Wings of Hope on humanitarian medical missions. 

"This is helping people, and the other was protecting people," Herberger said. "This is better."

Herberger serves as but one of many examples that former Boeing and McDonnell Douglas employees don't fade away when their tenure with aerospace manufacturing draws to a close. They instead lend their time and expertise to restoring and maintaining the fleet of aircraft operated by a nonprofit fast closing in on its 50th anniversary.

Herberger reports three times a week to the pristine Spirit of St. Louis Airport hangar that anchors the Chesterfield nonprofit's global aviation fleet.

The genesis of the organization, which has provided medical transportation to thousands of patients - most of them children - goes back to four St. Louis businessmen's donating a replacement aircraft to a nurse working in the Kenyan bush in 1962.

Wings of Hope has since accommodated the demand for aircraft at the 150 bases it oversees around the world by building a fleet composed entirely of donated used planes, many of which arrive at the Spirit of St. Louis hangar severely damaged from crashes.

The responsibility for getting the craft airborne rests on a band of volunteers, most of them Boeing and McDonnell Douglas retirees.

"What amazes me is that they keep showing up, week after week," said Dan Lorenz, a former Eastern Airlines mechanic who oversees fleet maintenance. Lorenz is one of a handful of employees on the organization's payroll. 

Larry Masters, who has not earned a cent over the 20 years he's been tinkering with Wings of Hope aircraft, better represents the rest of the people populating the hangar on any given day.

Masters, a mechanical engineer, describes himself as an "oddball" because he retired from Monsanto and not the aerospace industry. For Masters, volunteering on behalf of Wings of Hope is a natural extension of an obsession with aviation that began with model airplanes as a kid. It continued through a stint as a maintenance officer with the Air Force and culminated the day he earned his pilot's license.

"I like to work with my hands, and I know what I'm doing," said Masters. "And this is a good charity, doing good work."

Teresa Camp's occasional presence at the Wings of Hope headquarters is proof that retirement is not mandatory for involvement with the charity.

Camp, currently the chief engineer for Boeing's defense and government service unit, gravitated to the organization after receiving her pilot's license a dozen years ago.

Before long, Camp, her husband and then-9-year-old daughter were devoting a significant portion of their Saturdays to the refurbishment of a World War II vintage DC-3 which, legend has it, flew missions on D-Day.

The plane is now based in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. "A lot of people have a need" for the services provided by Wings of Hope, Camp said. "And many of those needs are very complex. This is a great opportunity to step in to assist."

Last Thursday morning found Tom Purdy crouched beneath a Piper airplane, adjusting a component inside the wing assembly. Purdy isn't a pilot - "My wife says not to bother coming back if I try to go up in one of these things" - but with 37 years at Boeing before retiring as an equipment engineer in 1999, Purdy certainly understands aviation.

With Boeing, Purdy made parts. Now, he's "putting them together" in aircraft where "there's not a lot of room to work." Still, Purdy isn't complaining

When work on the Piper is completed, it's likely that Wings of Hope will enlist the plane for use in the Medical Relief and Air Transport Program (MAT) that ferries young patients to hospital centers across the United States. 

The wrench he was wielding, Purdy acknowledged, was "indirectly" saving lives. And that, he allowed, "is a good thing."