KEARNEY-On March 4, CHI Health Good Samaritan will celebrate the 40th anniversary of AirCare’s first flight. To honor the history of the air ambulance program, a blessing will be streamed live on the Good Samaritan AirCare Facebook page at 1 p.m. on Friday. The community is invited to watch virtually. The ceremony will pay tribute to the past and present flight crews and patients, with a special remembrance for lives lost in service.
The flight program’s first helicopter, an orange Fairchild-Hiller FH 1100, lifted off from the hospital’s parking lot for the 181-mile ground-breaking flight. A snowstorm made travel by ground ambulance inadvisable. Ron Rodgers, the helicopter’s owner, was the pilot for the mission. Pediatrician Dr. Dennis Edwards and pediatric nurse Syndie Brueggemann served as the medical crew for a newborn requiring emergency surgery at Children’s Hospital in Omaha. The baby girl was born with Omphalocele–a condition where the intestines, liver and other internal organs developed outside the body. The mission and corrective surgery were successful.
Good Samaritan’s air transport service became fully-operational on July 21 and completed 55 transports, mostly neonates, that first year. The joint effort between Good Samaritan and Rodgers Helicopter Service was later named AirCare and has become the longest operating original air ambulance service in Nebraska.
AirCare, now a partnership including Apollo MedFlight, completed 344 missions last year.
