Karma Christmas

Each year, these compassionate yogis create their own holiday traditions of comfort and joy.

By Alan Reder

Original credit for Wings of Warmth goes to a recreational pilot named Steve Kish, who lives in Center Valley, Pennsylvania. One winter evening in 1989, Kish watched a television news report about the crash of a small aircraft, and started thinking of ways to generate more positive coverage about the overall safety of small planes.

Then another news item caught his eye—a story about the struggles faced by the less-fortunate at Christmastime. The segue sparked an idea. Avid pilots like him often flew on the weekends just for fun. At holiday time, why not load up these planes with items that people of lesser means might need, fly to a chilly town, and hand the gifts over to a charitable agency for distribution?

Kish shared his idea with nearby flying clubs, and the first Wings of Warmth flight took place that winter to Coatesville, Pennsylvania. In later years, the NASA Goddard Flying Club, a group of NASA Goddard Space Center employees that was involved since the beginning, adopted Wings of Warmth as its own. The project is fueled by a sense of gratitude that runs deep among pilots, say longtime participants Tom Paradis and Fred Pierce.

"Pilots realize how fortunate they are," says Pierce. "For millions of years, people have been trying to fly, and we actually live in the time when we can. There's a saying that those of us who fly have a debt to pay."

Alan Reder is the author or coauthor of five books, including The Whole Parenting Guide (Broadway Books, 1999) and Listen to This!: Leading Musicians Recommend Their Favorite Artists and Recordings (Hyperion, 1999).

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