For Lawrence native and current Colorado resident Brent Ingham, one telephone call was all it took.
Less than 24 hours after taking the call, he was piloting an airplane headed for earthquake-ravaged Chile.
“It just sounded like a good adventure,” said Ingham, who graduated from Lawrence High School in 1993. He came back to the city after college until moving in 2005. He now lives in the Denver area.
Ingham is the son of Carol and Laird Ingham, who lived in Lawrence for 30 years while Laird practiced medicine with Reed Medical Group and served as the team physician for the Kansas University athletics department.
Their son has made a career out of piloting small aircraft, working as a corporate pilot as well as flying skydivers, traffic reporters and others.
An acquaintance who knew of his experience called Ingham about 1 p.m. on a Sunday after the Chilean earthquake had struck. Ingham said he’s currently going back to school and had some free time.
He was offered the opportunity to fly members of a humanitarian aid group, World Vision International, to Chile. There were many obstacles, including getting permission to land.
His Learjet plane was one of a few non-military or non-national airline flights allowed to land in Santiago immediately following the quake, he said.
His humanitarian group had volunteered to fly some South American dignitaries to and from the site, giving them the clearance that they needed to get inside the country, Ingham said.
On the return leg of the trip, he flew the Peruvian secretary of state to Costa Rica to meet with United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The trip marked the farthest south he had ever been before, after a previous trip to Costa Rica, he said.
“Twenty to 30 years from now, I guarantee this’ll be the greatest adventure I’ve had flying,” Ingham said.
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puddleglum (anonymous) says…
i like pretty pictures.