Thursday, March 11, 2010

Afghan Child Project Honors Blackwater Aviation

Ever since I started working with children and orphanages over here, Blackwater Aviation (now Presidential Airways) has been wonderful to our project.  They have allowed me to store donations on their compound and hauled items on space-available flights with their customer's full consent.  We could never have delivered the many boxes we get without Blackwater/Presidential's help. 

I first came to Afghanistan as a pilot with Blackwater. They haul people and mail all over the country and even do low level airdrops from their Casa-212s. It was during these airdrops that we had the pleasure of being shot by Taliban small arms fire. We also flew to Bamyan a lot and that is how I found the orphanage there.
Last week, Meridith and I gave small plaques to Brian Jurkovic, the Base Manager (top Pic), and to Blackwater's mechanics, Pictured here are Jerry Burns and Gene Seamster, Josh and Sam. 

And as soon as we took the Pics, everybody went right back to their never ending work of operating a dozen airplanes here and I went out and stuffed another dozen+ boxes of children's clothing aboard a Blackwater flight heading for Bamyan. 

Again, my thanks to everyone at Blackwater/Presidential.  We cannot do this work without you.

2 comments:

  1. Finally! Something positive!

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  2. With all the bad you hear about Blackwater, it is great to see that there are some generous, caring people working there and that they are doing some good, afterall.

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