Saluting Houston’s health care heroes
Navy’s Blue Angels thrill as jets soar above Med Center
The Navy’s Blue Angels, a flight demonstration squad, flew over the Houston area Wednesday in a tribute to front-line workers in the COVID-19 fight. Nurses, doctors and other health care workers gathered atop places such as the old Memorial Hermann helipad and the Harris County Jail rooftop to watch the flyby.
The roar of the Blue Angels reverberated throughout the Medical Center on Wednesday as the Naval flight squadron paid tribute to those working to treat COVID-19 patients.
Blue skies were waiting for the dozens of people who filled the Cambridge Street bridge in the minutes leading up to the 12:30 p.m. flyby for frontline medical workers. Among them were families staying at the nearby Ronald McDonald House who walked over with their young children to see the F/A-18 Hornets arrive from Dallas.
First-time Blue Angels observers Diana and David Campos, of Amarillo, have been in Houston since January for their 8-monthold son, Elian, to receive a liver transplant — even while the novel coronavirus pandemic started sweeping through Harris County.
“It’s a little hard but we have to be here,” Diana Campos said. “It’s for our baby.”
The couple made sure little Elian didn’t catch too much sun after recently undergoing the transplant. Elian is on the mend and the family is slated soon to return to the Panhandle.
Five-year-old Mariana, who started chemotherapy this week, joined the Campos family while waiting for her mother, Mariana Escamilla, to catch up. The girl,
wearing a mask, moved her whole body to watch the famed aerobatic team speed over her head.
Her mother soon arrived and said the two of them came from Nuevo Laredo in Mexico in May 2019 to start her leukemia treatment. Campos translated for Escamilla. The two became friends through their time at the charity housing.
“She’s so strong,” Escamilla said in Spanish of her daughter.
Houstonians gathered wherever they could — on top of parking garages, apartment complexes and even stopping on the side of the Texas 288 on-ramp — to catch a look at the Blue Angels.
The fighter jets made one last pass north of downtown Houston, giving joggers at Eleanor Tinsley Park in Montrose a view of their contrails. The planes then passed over Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base with plans to continue on to New Orleans as salute to first responders, health care and other essential workers.