The latest estimates say that roughly 1.4 million people are on the brink of starvation, more than half a million have been displaced, cholera is making a comeback, and more than 30 hospitals and other heath facilities in metropolitan Port-au-Prince have been vandalized or looted while residents huddle for safety in schools and churches. Hope looks like a fleet of airplanes loaded with medical supplies, food, potable water and, most urgently, a long-awaited Kenyan-led police force to eradicate the gangs.
Yet, every now and then, a shaft of light filters through the darkness. One of these was captured in a June 16 photo sent to me by a friend. It is a dazzling portrait of about a dozen Haitian girls and boys, ages 5 and 6, upon their graduation from kindergarten in Ranquitte, a rural village a safe four hours or so north of Port-au-Prince. The girls, all smiles, wear identical pink dresses, white ankle socks and black shoes. The boys, all smiles, wear matching pink shirts, dark trousers and shoes.
These children are among the beneficiaries of one man’s imagination and a split-second decision he made in 2010 that changed his life and those of countless others.
Jonathan Glynn (the subject of two previous columns) had been flying his single-engine Cessna from Sag Harbor, N.Y., to Miami to visit his brother. Riding shotgun, as always, was his canine co-pilot, Lily, a short-haired, silver-dappled dachshund. At some point — for some reason — Glynn decided to ditch the Miami trip and fly instead to Haiti, where a 7.0 earthquake had nearly leveled the island and killed an estimated 100,000 to more than 300,000 people, detouring briefly to deposit Lily with his brother and grab supplies. Then, armed with only a handheld GPS, he pointed his aircraft toward the worst disaster on the planet.
Stopping every 2½ hours for fuel, Glynn reached Port-au-Prince in seven hours, only to find the country’s infrastructure so damaged, there was nowhere to land. Looping around the area, he finally found a primitive airstrip in nearby Jacmel.
I first heard this story in early 2011, when Glynn and I happened to be at the same bar in the American Hotel in Sag Harbor. (When you walk into a place and the bartender immediately produces a plate of crispy bacon for your blind poodle, conversation with strangers comes easy.) Glynn had me at “I knew I couldn’t save everyone, but I thought I might be able to save a few children.” He meant the homeless children he had seen tripping through the wreckage of Port-au-Prince.
In retrospect, Glynn can barely believe his own story. “It was weirdly providential, because I let go and things came to me. I never did really believe in God until then. It’s still a mystery to me.”
He met people from Calvary Chapel from the New England area who had money and trucks and wanted to distribute medical supplies. Because larger planes couldn’t land in Haiti, Glynn became a one-man Air Force for a few weeks, delivering medical supplies and transporting doctors. He recalled seeing “unimaginable wounds in human flesh that I couldn’t really handle even though I came from a family of doctors.”
“In a short period of time, I got used to countless amputations and a situation of desperation that propelled me for 17 days,” he said. “Emotions were numb, like being in the eye of a hurricane, and I couldn’t really sleep. I slept in my plane.”
In Port-au-Prince, lawlessness had set in.
“The airport was chaotic,” Glynn recently texted to me. “It was violent outside and many vehicles were riddled with bullets.”
After witnessing the madness, he decided to shelve his career as an artist and dedicate himself to building schools, one at a time — somehow. Glynn wasn’t a builder, a contractor or an educator. He’s an artist who creates mostly abstract paintings, though he had been a real estate entrepreneur. Soon enough, “somehow” became Wings Over Haiti, a nonprofit organization staffed by volunteers and funded by donations and fundraisers. So far, Glynn’s team has built two schools.
The first, the Heart School, opened in 2011 near Port-au-Prince and today has about 250 students K-12. The children are fed two meals a day and receive free medical attention. The second school, in Ranquitte, opened in 2019 with four classrooms and 104 students in kindergarten and first grade. These pupils are served a hot meal every day, and a school nurse provides antibiotics and other vital medications that had been unavailable to them. The plan is to add a second story to accommodate another 100 students, and ultimately to educate all 400 or so children in the village.
The organization’s other plans in Ranquitte include adding a solar-powered water pump for the well that volunteers have recently tapped, a water filtration system and storage, with the aim of providing clean water to the entire village.
Next month in Bridgehampton, N.Y., Glynn will host his annual Hamptons Artists for Haiti benefit, featuring a silent auction of art donated by 50 artists, in hopes of raising $100,000 for the Ranquitte projects.
Glynn has kept his promise to himself. In the 13 years since we spoke at the American Hotel, hundreds of Haitian children and families have become better educated and nourished, healthier and happier. Lily, sadly, has crossed the rainbow and has been followed (not replaced) by Lolo, a chocolate, short-haired mini-dachshund. Glynn, approaching 73, has retired his Cessna and now flies commercial.
Life goes on, in other words. And thanks to a singular man’s dedication, heart and imagination, so does hope.
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