Mt. Pleasant Rotary Club supports Flight to End Polio

MT. PLEASANT - By mid-May, Iowans Peter Teahen and John Ockenfels will join a select group of about three hundred people alive today who have flown across the world in a single-engine plane.

Ockenfels made a stop at the evening Rotary Club in Mt. Pleasant on Monday to share details of the duo's odyssey. The men are using their flight to raise awareness and funds to end polio.

Telling the story of how the idea for the trot across the globe came to be, Ockenfels said Teahen began planning for the trip a year and a half ago, a personal lifelong dream for Teahen, before asking Ockenfels to join last April.

Several months into the planning, Ockenfels, an active Rotarian, floated the idea of using their trip as a platform to raise funds to eradicate polio. Both Teahen and Ockenfels, who are part of the Fellowship of Flying Rotarians, began promoting their trip in partnership with Rotary International.

'Our goal is to raise $1 million, which will be matched two-to-one by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,” Ockenfels said. In his presentation, Ockenfels pointed out that the average cost to provide polio vaccination drops is $3 but Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan continue to struggle with the disease.

'The phrase we hear all the time is ‘Polio is only a flight away,' but we also say that ‘ending polio is only a flight away,' too,” Ockenfels said.

Ockenfels, who has been flying airplanes since the 1970s, detailed the route the pair would be taking, which will include 29 landings in 17 countries. About a third of their trip will be over water. The longest stretch will be a 10-hour flight over the Atlantic Ocean. The pair plan to depart in late-March, flying out of Cedar Rapids, and making their way back to Iowa by mid-May.

'We're very serious. We were doing the flight anyway, we're going to pay our own way around the world,” Ockenfels said, '100% of the money that we're collecting will go to the Rotary Foundation to help end polio forever.”

As news about the flight has traveled and gained traction, Ockenfels has been making rounds with local Rotary Clubs. During their flight, Teahen and Ockenfels also plan to meet and speak with global clubs.

'We're asking people to tell us their polio stories … tell us the story about how you or someone you know is affected by polio. It's amazing the stories that are coming out and people are getting quite emotional as they're saying ‘My dad died,' or ‘My brother died.' And I am one of those people personally. My granddad, born in 1890 and in about 1895-96, he got polio,” Ockenfels shared.

Many of the local Rotary Club members were impressed with the ambitious flight and fundraising efforts Ockenfels and Teahen were doing. Mt. Pleasant Rotary Club member and former District Gov. Cal Litwiller even pledged to match a certain amount of donations from the club chapter.

Litwiller, who helped set up the visit, explained that he invited Ockenfels to speak at their meeting in part to support a friend and fellow Rotarian, but also because the Rotary Club has a history of fighting the disease.

'Back in 1985, the World Health Organization was meeting to discuss what can we do about polio. Because at that time there were 1,000 new cases every day and one of the people on the board was a Rotarian and he said ‘Rotary could help.' So we've been trying to get rid of polio since 1985,” Litwiller said.

Those interested in more information about the flight or donating to the fundraiser can visit www.flighttoendpolio.com.