Powerful Medicine: Fletcher Gill on Uniting Recovering Service Members with Their Families through Luke's Wings

When the bonds of family intersect with the challenges faced by Wounded Warriors, something extraordinary happens. It's a tale of resilience and reunion, brought to life by Fletcher Gill, CEO and co-founder of Luke's Wings. As our esteemed guest, he shares the moving origins and pivotal mission of an organization committed to bringing together service members and their loved ones during recovery. Picture the embrace of a child, the support of a spouse, the comfort of a parent—these are the moments that Luke's Wings makes possible, with over 16,000 flights ensuring that no hero heals alone.

This conversation is more than just stories of heartwarming homecomings; it's a look behind the scenes at the partnerships and technology that make these moments possible. From Delta's mileage donations to American Airlines' price matching, the intricate dance of logistics and compassion comes to life. As we navigate the organization's journey and its funding lifelines, we're reminded of the ongoing need for support—whether for veterans headed to therapeutic retreats or families grappling with the aftermath of military sexual assault trauma. Fletcher's call to action is clear: join the effort to uphold our service members and their families in their time of need because healing together is the most powerful medicine of all.

Chapters

• 0:00 Luke's Wings
• 14:20 Luke's Wings
• 21:22 Programs and Funding for Military Support

Transcript

Larry Zilliox: 0:15

Good morning. I'm Larry Zilliox, Director of Culinary Services here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run, and today our guest is Fletcher Gill. He's co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit Luke's Wings, which is an organization that flies wounded warriors police officers around the country when they need help and treatment. So I'm really excited to hear more about Luke's Wings. They've been operating in a veteran service organization space for quite some time, pretty well known, but I think a lot of listeners really don't know that much about them. So, Fletcher, welcome to the podcast. I really appreciate you joining us.

Fletcher Gill: 1:00

Well, thanks for having me, Larry. It's nice to be here.

Larry Zilliox: 1:03

Hello to your audience If you could just give us a little brief kind of background on Luke's Wings, what it does and how it got started.

Fletcher Gill: 1:12

Sure Luke's Wings is, as you said, a 501c3 nonprofit. We fly families in and out of military hospitals to be by the bedside of our wounded, ill and injured service members during their recovery. We believe that the love of family is great medicine and something that is really mission critical to their recovery process. We got started in 2008. We incorporated in January of 2008. So we've been around for about 16 years 17 years and in that time we've done over 16,000 airplane tickets providing the love of family to wounded, ill and injured service members all over the world.

Fletcher Gill: 1:59

You know it could be a combat injury service member steps on an IED, wakes up at Walter to read a month later lost both legs, and we want to make sure that the family is there in the room when he wakes up. But it might be cancer that was. You know that a service member got up because he was in active duty and he was around burn pits or uranium deposit you know something like that jet fuel and he comes back, he's 23 and all of a sudden he has some aggressive cancer. Sure, well, that's a long road and we want to make sure that his family is with him every step of the way. So just two examples, and how we got started is an interesting story.

Fletcher Gill: 2:40

Luke's Wings is named after two people Luke Shirley and Sarah Wingfield. Sarah Wingfield was a Redskins cheerleader ambassador a lot like a cheerleader, but you know they do more. Parents work, you know, and and and and community outreach work for football team, then an on field cheering. And so Sarah was a Redskins cheerleader ambassador for the Washington Redskins and she was a Walter Reed in the spring of 2007. And she was in her you know Redskins outfit and she was there to meet the troops and she met a service member named Luke Shirley and he had lost an arm and a leg. He was heavily medicated, he was going through surgery after surgery and there was Sarah Wingfield, this beautiful you know NFL cheerleader, and she was standing in front of him and he was in a wheelchair in a Dolphins Jersey, miami Dolphins Jersey. She kept trying to break the ice and say you know, oh, you know the dolphins, this and that, and you know Redskins. And he was completely disconnected and she saw that you know, and that troubled her. And then a little while later, his mother showed up. Luke's mom showed up and when she showed up, luke changed. Luke immediately recognized that his mother was there, he started to connect back into what was going on in the room. Sarah saw an opportunity and, long story short, they spent pretty much the entire day getting to know each other and talking and becoming friends.

Fletcher Gill: 4:08

And when Sarah Wingsfield told me that story six months later, in the December of 2007, the part of her story that really resonated with me was how his mother changed everything for him when his mother was there and we got to talking about this and I said you know, was his mom there for visiting hours? Do they live near Bethesda, maryland, near Walter Reed? No, no, no, his mom lives there. Well, what do you mean? She lives there. Well, the government provides one airplane ticket to fly family to the bedside of our wounded warriors and then they provide a per diem. And so the moms and wives are living there, they're having babies there, they're putting down roots in the community, they're there for three or four years at a time.

Fletcher Gill: 4:58

And I thought, my God, that's news to me, you know. And then I thought, well, maybe what we could do is raise some money, go up to Walter Reed, as we live nearby, and find Luke's mom and offer to just send her home. You know, buy her a plane ticket, get her home, let her sleep in her own bed, check in with the other kids, open the mail, pay some bills, do whatever she needs to do for a weekend, and then she'll be right back. My friend, sarah Winkfield, thought I was crazy and she said can we do that? And I said, you know what? No one can stop us from raising money and no one can stop us from buying a plane ticket for somebody else. So you know what? I don't see any problem. And so we just said, okay, well, you know, I'm with you, let's do it.

Fletcher Gill: 5:42

So, and Jen, in March of 2008, a couple months later, we threw a party at the City Tavern Club in Washington DC and we raised about $12,000. We went to Walter Reed and we knocked on their door and we said, hey, we'd like to start flying some family in and out of here. And you know, we didn't know what to expect. But they were very open to the idea. And the next thing we knew, by June of 2008, we were flying families in and out and, like I said before, you know we have done 16,000 flights now and counting.

Larry Zilliox: 6:15

And they're flown from wherever they live to wherever they need to go, and that would include international flights like over to Lundersstahl.

Fletcher Gill: 6:24

Absolutely so. If we get a request from somebody in Lundersstahl, germany, then chances are the service member is not stable enough to make it state side and it means that they're probably going to pass away in Lundersstahl, in which case we'll fly family over there, yes, but we also fly all over the place. So you know, you got to remember that a lot of young men and women are not joining the military because they got a lot of options right. They want to serve their country, of course, god bless them, but they also see the GI Bill or they see the steady paycheck, they see a way to get to college through it, you know. So they're very young and they come from very modest beginnings, right, and what we then find is minorities, and we find minority service members who have a family in places like, you know, guadalmpeur or Puerto Rico.

Fletcher Gill: 7:19

A lot of flights over the years have been Puerto Rico and you know, when it comes to a service member being injured, being in a military hospital, recovering, and we get a call and say, you know, they say, listen, my dad's in Puerto Rico and I haven't seen him in 20 years, you know, and I'm injured and this might be the last time I get to see him to these really old. You know we want to do something about that. So it's all over the world. You know we fly people all over the world Absolutely. At the end of the day, if we have a wounded, ill or injured service member and they're recovering in a hospital somewhere and it's going to boost their spirits to have somebody by their bedside, we're going to find a way to make it out.

Larry Zilliox: 7:59

And is this so? I recently did a podcast with Compassion Airlift, which is out of Manassas Airport, and they actually fly veterans in their own plane. But you're buying commercial tickets on various carriers to get people from point A to point B, right?

Fletcher Gill: 8:22

Yes, that's right. So what they're doing is fantastic and you know, if somebody can provide ambulatory flights, let's say that you have a service member who is in a hospital bed and they have some kind of life support. You know you can't put them on a Delta flight, so they need an ambulatory flight, and there's organizations that provide that as well. Our model is to provide flights on major carriers all carriers, really. So Delta, american United, you know, spirit Southwest, any of them and the reason that's our model is because we want to be able to provide emergency flights and we want to be able to provide flexibility and travel.

Fletcher Gill: 9:06

So, we work with a travel agency called Direct Travel Management used to be called McNair Travel. They've been with us since the very beginning in January of 2008. What we want is, when somebody applies to become a Luke's Wing family, we want to give them the best, you know, the best experience, and so we want to give them a travel agent, just like they were the CEO of a company, and we want to be able to fly them out on the next flight out, and we want them to be able to change their flights and if they have special arrangements or requirements, we want to find the flight that works for them. So if somebody calls me, I'll give you an example, if I may. We had a flight request out of Fort Carson, colorado.

Fletcher Gill: 9:49

There was a snowstorm in Colorado and a Red Cross volunteer called us up and said listen, I have a wounded warrior here. He's suffering post traumatic stress and he's injured. And he's here at Fort Carson, colorado and we just got a phone call from Boston Massachusetts that his father is on his deathbed and his father is in a hospital in Boston Massachusetts and we don't know what to do. And I said here's what you're going to do. You're going to tell the service member to pack his bag, and by the time that he finishes packing his bag, we're going to have a flight for him out of Denver airport and we'll get him home.

Fletcher Gill: 10:27

So, as luck would have it, we had a volunteer Shelly Yee, I still remember her name she was she had moved to Denver. She went out there, you know, and she moved her life out there. I thought, gosh, we have an old volunteer that I think she's in Denver. Let's give her a call. We called her and we said listen, we have something we need your help with. Can you drive in this snowstorm? Drive over to Fort Carson, colorado, pick up this young man and drive him to the airport. And she said sure, I'll take care of it. So we talked to him around 10am and we had him at the airport Michelle E Drowland, in the airport in Denver, and we had him wheels down in Boston, massachusetts. That afternoon he had three hours with his father before his father passed away. Now the only way that we could do that is by searching every single carrier right that was flying out of Denver that day and just finding the flight. You know, spare no expense, doesn't matter what it costs. Which airplane can get into his dad before his dad passes away.

Fletcher Gill: 11:25

And that's been our model, you know, for going on 17 years, and I think that's why hospitals and caregivers and patient advocates, all you know, ultimately come to Luke's wings at the end of the day, because you know if they exhausted other resources or maybe they've gone to another organization and they tried to book using miles and then they had to change their flight and then you know, they lost the miles because they're kind of nonrefundable and you can't change them, and then they ended up coming to us for a flight. You know, we just use cold hard cash, we use miles. Let me say we have probably 15 million Delta miles because we're a Delta partner and we're on Delta's website. You can go to Delta's website right now, log in and go to your portal and you'll see an opportunity to just transfer any unused miles straight to Luke's wing, which is fantastic. So of course, we can stretch the dollar by using those miles, but at the end of the day, it's all about cold hard cash, right? And I'll give you another story.

Fletcher Gill: 12:26

There was a family not ours, not one of ours, but a family that was going to receive the body of their fallen son and they were, you know, obviously completely in a bad place, they weren't thinking and whatever else. And they had a connecting flight and they made it to the connecting airport and they got off the first flight and they moved, you know, they walked down the gate to the other gate. They walked down you know the tunnel to the other gate and they get to the next flight, to their connecting flight, and the airline had overbooked them, overbooked the flight, so there were no more seats and the stewardess on the airline and got on the, you know, on the speaker and she said, hey, we have a family that's sitting outside at the gate and they really need to get to where they're going. Would anybody give up their seats for this? And nobody gave up their seats, so they didn't get. They got there eventually, but they didn't get there to receive their son, to receive the body of their son.

Fletcher Gill: 13:24

Now, if that had been a Luke's Flames family forget about it I would have had them on a first class flight, you know what I mean. On any other carrier wouldn't matter what it would have cost, I would have had them where they needed to go. So that's always been our philosophy and always been our model and that's why we don't use private planes Again. It's a great model and it works really well. It's just not our brush.

Larry Zilliox: 13:51

So please tell me that airlines give you discounts, doesn't that when family is traveling and somebody calls for a travel agency and says, hi, I'm calling it's Luke's wings, we've got this family that the airline is saying, okay, this is the lowest possible fare and here you go. They're not jacking it up like they do for everybody else.

Fletcher Gill: 14:16

But all right, all right. I totally get that. We have different relationships with different airlines and I think they all do what they can. For example, delta's website is very sophisticated, so they have the ability to allow people to transfer miles to charity, which is great. You have other airlines that just don't have that level of technology on their websites and they're not gonna make a global revamp of their entire website for something like that, and so we just need to wait patiently for them to get around to it, I suppose. So in some cases, it's technology that is the relationship builder and in another case it's a person.

Fletcher Gill: 15:01

And, for example, american Airlines, on a back when we were in the heat of the wars and you know battle every day they had a military, you know a department that did PR and military outreach and we had a contact there, and so when we tried to price out an American flight and it was extremely expensive, and then we went to another airline and you know, a similar flight was much cheaper but not the right flight we could call our contacts in America and say, hey, will you match the cost?

Fletcher Gill: 15:32

Right, you know there's another flight, but it's not the right flight for this, but you know it's a similar flight and it's half the money they would give us. They would kind of match the price and that was great. So you know, american was good in that way. Spirit Airlines gives us vouchers, so they give us free tickets, not unlimited amounts, but a lot Sure. And so we have different relationships with different airlines and I think they all try to do what they can. And I'll tell you one more wonderful thing is if we do have a family that's flying for a really, really difficult situation, if we can reach out to the gate crew and they can reach out to, you know, the team on the plane and everybody is aware of the family, that's paramount. I mean, that's worth its weight in gold because you know we want everybody to understand what's happening with that family that's about to get on their airplane.

Larry Zilliox: 16:27

Sure, so where does most of the funding come from?

Fletcher Gill: 16:31

Where does most of the funding come from? I would say it comes from miracles. You know, all joking aside, it's a combination of corporate sponsorship and then individual donors. We have some really wonderful loyal corporate sponsors SRS distribution down in Texas. They have a foundation called Heritage Cares, the Pete store on the East Coast. They sell Peterbilt trucks and they're a big sponsor of our car cars. It's a more local to the DC metro area up and down the East Coast also Car dealership. You know just a lot of companies out there donate to us and we really rely on that steady revenue. You know we can budget better that way. We also rely on our individual donors. If we get on television or on a podcast like this, you know every dollar count. Every $350 we collect is another airplane ticket and it might be one ticket. But I tell you, for the person who got that ticket it mattered Right.

Larry Zilliox: 17:42

Yeah.

Fletcher Gill: 17:42

And then during the holidays we have a no soldier spends the holidays alone campaign. We used to call it no soldier spends Christmas alone. Now it's the most service members spends the holidays alone and the idea there is that you know, we're home with our kids on Christmas morning. My God, our service members should be home with theirs. So we do a big push in November and December. We get some earned media and we get some donations that way too.

Larry Zilliox: 18:07

Going forward. Where do you see Luke's wings in three to five years?

Fletcher Gill: 18:12

That's a great question, larry. When we started in 2008, we had service members in hospitals, and so we rolled out our wounded warrior transportation assistance program and we knew exactly where our mission was. It was to bring family to the bedside of our service numbers who were critically injured, catastrophically injured, in combat during their time in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a very clear cut, straightforward mission with very little mission creep. When we started to roll out of those wars, the question became how do we continue to be relevant? Right? Who are we going to keep flying? Well, of course, we can continue to fly our wounded warriors who have ongoing treatments or have to get back to a hospital, you know, to get a prosthetic reset or something like that.

Fletcher Gill: 19:02

But you know where's where's, where's the need now, and we started rolling out new program lines. We had rolled out a program line, I think, around 2014. And that was for veterans in hospice care. We started to realize we were losing our World War Two veterans and you know, I think today, currently, we only have about 200,000 of them left in this world, losing them at about 80,000 a year. Well, let's make sure that they're never alone when they pass away, right? I mean, how could we let that happen? So we have a veterans in hospice care transportation assistance program.

Fletcher Gill: 19:37

We also noticed that as we were rolling out of Afghanistan and out of Iraq, the politics of it was you know, the public optics from Washington was hey, we're taking all of our troops out and we're bringing them out. Well, yes, but there were still battles to be fought. And so what happened? Well, they brought the GIs out, the General Infantry, you know, out of Afghanistan and out of Iraq, and what they did was, with with nobody knowing, they put in all of our special forces. So Luke's Wings started to see an increase in the number of wounded special operators, navy SEALs, green Beret, because they were doing, you know, tactical missions after all of the major troops had left. And so we have another program line for them, called the Special Operations Transportation Assistance Program, or SOAP we like our acronyms. That's another service line. And then one more to mention is our FOTAP for fallen officers. If you remember, right around 2016, 2017, we had police officers that were just sitting in their police cars minding, you know, just doing their jobs, and somebody would run up to the car and attack them and yell I'll lock bar or something. And you know, they tried to make it a, you know, a religiously motivated attack. And so we thought, well, if our troops are overseas fighting terrorists and we're supporting them, but our cops are here, you know, on our own soil fighting terrorists, why don't we support them too? So we started the fallen officers transportation assistance program, and so those are our program lines and they keep us very busy. We're doing about 2000 flights a year. You ask where we go from here In three to five years. We are constantly looking at new program lines, we're constantly looking for funding and we're always trying to stay current, you know, with the times. And so the other program lines that we have been deliberating about and would roll out if we had major funding for them, in other words, I don't want to can cannibalizes a technically correct word, but you know, take away from an existing program line, right, I don't want to do that. If we can find new funding, then great.

Fletcher Gill: 21:55

And and a couple of program lines that we have been considering. One would be to send wounded, ill and injured service members to retreats and other destination locations. You know even, and with their families, you know, a lodge when they service, support veterans and provide, you know, therapy. Let's say that would be a good program line. Another program line would be to provide emergency travel for family in the event of military sexual trauma, and that's a bit of a lightning rod issue, but it happens and actually a lot of men, males as well as females, experience military sexual trauma during their active duty time in the military.

Fletcher Gill: 22:41

No, you know I'm a father, I've got three kids. I have a daughter and I can only imagine, right, if she went to serve her country and something happened and she was assaulted. You know, just just out there, being in the military, I got I'd want to be by her bets, you know, I'd want to get to her immediately. So if we could plug into that that Aspect of the military where those cases, military sexual trauma are reported and then immediately escalated because they have a very good, you know, internal process for recording it, escalating it, managing it mom, yeah, you in that first like 48 hours if we could figure out how to plug into that and Then provide those emergency flights for family, I think that would be, that would be something really neat. So, and of course you know that's it's very, very meaningful for for every victim of military sexual trauma. That's another one. We're constantly looking for opportunities to Bring family together and an increased the likelihood of any successful recovery right Is in our military community.

Larry Zilliox: 23:45

Well, I I do hope you get it the funding. I think those are all you know excellent programs that are needed for sure I certainly Can think of when it comes to getting veterans To different treatment or retreats around the country. I could think of, you know, the warrior retreat at Bull Run. We always have people coming to the retreat from all over the country. But also Dark Horse Lodge in Tennessee, no barriers, usa out in Colorado all wonderful programs that the biggest hurdle for the veteran is to get there. It's transportation. Once they're there, everything's provided for him.

Fletcher Gill: 24:29

So right, but getting there is another story. You know it wings of wings of valor in South Dakota or Boulder Crest, you know there's many, many Destination locations like, yeah, another you mentioned treatment, if I may, would be drug and alcohol treatment. You know how many of our service members Come home and suffer from drug and alcohol Addiction, you know, and there are centers that that support them specifically, that really cater to the military community. But, again, like you said, you know how do they get there. I had a call last year from a young man. He called me from the ER in California, from an emergency room in a hospital in California, and he said you know, sir, Mr Gill, I have been drinking for whatever was four days straight and now I'm in the hospital. I've almost drank myself to death and I need help. And I found a place that will take me and I can get there tomorrow. They said they'll accept me tomorrow and I'll go through their rehabilitation program and deep talks, whatever was.

Fletcher Gill: 25:29

And I I'll tell you the true story. The true story is I said, sir, I'm sorry, you're not combat injured, you're not in a hospital, in a military hospital. I don't think we can do this. And I and we got off the phone and then I told my wife what happened and she said you've got to do that flight, come on, yes, oh. So we called him back and we said yes, and we sent him, got in there the next day or two days later, whatever it was, and I tell you I texted with him every day. He was able to. You know, he was allowed to use his phone at certain times or whatever, and he would check in with me and he got through the program. Then I got a nice message from his sister and you know, hey, you know he's coming out and he's going to come stay with me for a while. So that's, I would love to roll out a program specifically for that. We just don't have the funding at the moment. Maybe this podcast will help. Well, you know what it should.

Larry Zilliox: 26:22

I hope so, because look for our listeners you can find all the information you need at lukeswingsorg, and it's also where, if you need a flight, you can sign up or get the process started on the webpage right.

Fletcher Gill: 26:40

That's right there. We have an application on the website If there's a question. You know that if you have any questions about the application, just call us. Our emergency number is on the top of our website. So if it's a true medical emergency, you know, you just go right ahead and call the number. Forget about the application. Just call the emergency number and we'll take care of you.

Larry Zilliox: 27:02

Yeah, go to the website, take a look at it. The most important part, though, I want everybody to take a look at is on the top right is a button says donate now. I want everybody to just hammer that donate now button. I just did it. It took less than 30 seconds. Everybody can donate something, and if you can't tell by now, listening to Fletcher and what he's told us about this program, this program saves lives, there's no doubt about it, and it can't keep going unless it's funded.

Larry Zilliox: 27:38

I know from being in the nonprofit space you can't count on corporate donations all the time. They are great when they come in and some of them are a lot of money, but you just can't count on them, and so what you really need is consistently for the community to step up and say okay, I'm going to give $100. I'm going to give $50. So I'm going to give $10. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been wonderful. I've known about Luke's wings for a while, but I didn't know how important it was until you really laid it out for us today. Thank you very much for coming on. Thanks for having me, larry. God bless to you and to your old friends for your time.

Fletcher Gill: 28:30

I love you, to you and to your whole audience. Appreciate you guys.

Larry Zilliox: 28:35

Okay for our listeners. We'll have another episode next Monday morning at 5 am for those who like to get up early and listen to podcasts. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can reach us at podcast at willingwarriorsorg. Until then, thanks for listening.