Wings, Wheels & Wishes

Wings, Wheels & Wishes benefitting Make-a-Wish Oklahoma

This event, and its predecessor, are near to my heart. A friend of mine was a wish recipient in middle school. He received a school bus clubhouse. Inside, it held arcade game machines and video games. At the time his family held an annual car show-sans fly-in. Third-generation family friends, I don’t remember not knowing Bill Campbell. It was his or his sister’s birthday party at Keystone Lake where I got a terrible double ear infection- the reason I won’t swim there now. We lost him our senior year of high school, a couple of months after his eighteenth birthday. His funeral filled the church, emptying the high school of its seniors. Wings, Wheels & Wishes has been produced in Bill’s memory by his mom Cindi Somers Conner (red shirt, third photo) for seven years and has grown into a large popular event hosted at Airman Acres in Collinsville, Oklahoma every August.

I was thrilled to be asked to photograph the volunteers at this car and motorcycle show & fly-in that benefits Make-a-Wish Oklahoma. It was explained that there would be another photographer for the planes and cars, but that they would love to have pictures of the amazing volunteers who make the fundraiser possible. A few days before the event I got another text- would I be interested in taking aerial photographs? Heck yes!