By Ethan Forman
DANVERS — When children ask where they come from, parents might be tempted to say the stork delivered them.
But when Ilan Hod gets older, his parents can say an ambulance jet delivered him all the way from Florida.
Yesterday, a MedCenter Air jet delivered Ilan to his new hometown, to Beverly Municipal Airport's West Side off Old Burley Street.
Inside the Cessna Citation V aircraft, the fragile baby, born eight weeks premature down in Florida, lay swaddled in a small blue incubator that somewhat resembled a spaceship.
After the jet roared to a stop on the tarmac outside North Atlantic Air's terminal, an American Medical Response ambulance rolled up to the jet. Crews then loaded the baby onto the ambulance for a ride to Beverly Hospital.
As his wife of six years, Emily Wiese, stepped from the plane, Ilan's dad, Aviv Hod, gave her a blue baby blanket made by Ilan's uncle and aunt.
"It was a good flight," Wiese said.
The air ambulance flight ended an ordeal for the Danvers family that began when Wiese gave birth to Ilan on Nov. 4. After not quite 32 weeks in the womb, Ilan weighed just 4 pounds at Orange Park Medical Center in Orange Park, Fla., Hod said.
Wiese was on a business trip to Jacksonville, Fla., when she called Hod at 3:30 a.m. and told him her water broke. Things progressed rapidly from there, and doctors delivered Ilan at 9:10 a.m.
Hod, who works for a company called SalesQuest in Andover, said he was just about to board a 9:30 flight to Florida when he received a call from his wife, who informed him their son "was born four minutes ago, want to hear him cry?"
Hod then started to cry.
This was supposed to be Wiese's last business trip before she was to give birth. She works for a company called Aptima of Woburn and had been giving workshops at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station, Hod said.
He credited Wiese's boss with getting things coordinated in Florida, even sending Wiese's co-workers who happened to be in Orlando, Fla., to her side in the hospital by noon so she could have some familiar faces around her, Hod said. The new dad was not able to arrive until 5 that evening.
"Two months to go, this isn't happening," said Wiese about her reaction to her son's birth. She also did not realize how long it would take to get back home.
"This is a small blip, I'll be back in Boston in a couple of days," she said.
Wiese was thankful to be able to fly with her preemie back home to Danvers in the medical jet.
"I'm so glad they were able to do this," she said.
Hod described his son as cute and adorable.
"We're really lucky," Hod said. "We are very fortunate. ... He's about as healthy as he can get being as fragile as he is."
Nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit in Orange Park thought the little boy had such a good set of lungs, they dubbed him "The Boston Wailer."
Hod said it was safe to fly Ilan back when he was able to maintain his body temperature on his own. But taking a regular flight was out of the question.
The couple's insurance company, Tufts, paid for the flight, and had a case manager on the phone who located the air ambulance company that specialized in neonatal care.
Hod, an Israeli-American, said it was also a coincidence his son was born in Jacksonville, a city he lived in for four years when he was younger.
"I haven't been back to Jacksonville since my bar mitzvah," he said.
Hod, a pilot who regularly flies out of Beverly Airport, said the arrival of his baby by plane also shows how valuable a community airport can be.
"The airport is a vital link to the rest of the country," Hod said.
Ilan's name also has meaning as he was named in honor of the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, who died Feb.1, 2003, aboard the space shuttle Columbia when it broke up over Texas just before it was supposed to land. Hod has family in Israel who are neighbors of Ramon's family. It also helps that Hod is a space buff.
Hod expects he and his wife will be able to take Ilan home from the hospital in a few weeks.
Staff writer Ethan Forman can be reached at 978-338-2673 or by e-mail at eforman@salemnews.com.
