One of River Oaks Toniest Mansions Gives Life-Saving Helicopter Service a Huge Boost: Life Flight Needs Millions to Relocate

Fasten your seatbelts Houston — Life Flight is relocating its helipad and the cost of the move for the nation’s busiest air ambulance service is $10 million. More than half of that has been committed, but the remainder needed was reason enough for a swank fundraising appeal in one of River Oaks’ toniest mansions.

Sheridan and John Eddie Williams welcomed a well-heeled coterie of doctors, philanthropists and Memorial Hermann supporters to their elegant home for a cocktail reception revealing details of the move and the fundraising effort. To encourage support, one of Memorial Hermann’s Life Flight helicopters buzzed the group gathered on the Williams terrace on the lovely spring night.

To meet the increasing demand on the non-profit Life Flight, which carried out 3,700 missions last year, the helipad is moving to the new 17-story Susan and Fayez Sarofim Pavilion, to be completed in 2020. The patient care tower will be home to the Red Duke Trauma Institute at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center.

The relocation of the helipad, explained Memorial Hermann Texas Medical Center CEO Brian Dean, will help better serve trauma care patients. Memorial Hermann TMC is recognized as the busiest Level 1 emergency room in the nation.

“Life Flight saves their lives,” said Dr. Michelle McNutt,  chief of trauma at the Memorial Hermann Red Duke Trauma Institute. “The trauma center sends them home.”

Memorial Hermann Foundation board chair Jim Postl, former president of Pennzoil-Quaker State, announced several recent gifts to the campaign including a $1.25 million commitment from energy mogul and philanthropist Gary Petersen and a $500,000 gift from Postl and his wife, Beverly.

In a brief note of levity, Memorial Hermann orthopedic surgeon Dr. Larry Likover re-enacted an encounter from 1975 with Dr. Red Duke, Life Flight founder, in which Duke had Likover, then an intern, stage the first Life Flight mission for television cameras. An actual mission took place a short time later.

Among the Memorial Hermann team attending were Memorial Hermann System president and CEO Chuck Stokes, Memorial Hermann Foundation executive vice president and CEO Anne Neeson, and physicians in their pristine lab coats Dr. Billy Gill, Dr. Lillian Kao, Dr. Chip Routt and Dr. Jamie McCarthy.

Community minded: Laurie and Tracy Krohn, Ellen and Steve Susman, Helene and Dror Zadok, Bill King, Dr. Mary Riley, Martha Ann and Byron Snyder, Donna Vallone, Tony Bradfield and Kevin Black, Laura and Dr. Mike Sweeney, Vesta and Dr. Pedro Frommer, Jonathan Zadok, Bonnie Likover, Lora and Dr. John Clemmons, David Dewhurst, Whitney and Jim Crane, Melissa and Doug Schnitzer, Jo Lynn and Gregg Falgout and Alice and Keith Mosing.