Don Campion
Don Campion was born to medical missionaries in Nigeria, West Africa, where he routinely flew aboard small mission aircraft to attend a Protestant mission boarding school. He grew up in Egbe, Nigeria, a rural environment where they dug wells for water, built their own homes and had a generator for a few hours at night. After high school in Nigeria, Don moved to Toronto to attend Seneca College, offering a four-year program of aviation courses that included a commercial pilot's license followed by one year of aircraft maintenance training.
In 1979, Don moved to South Florida and co-founded Banyan Air Service in a small hangar servicing aircraft at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. Banyan now employs over 200 teammates and is ranked among America's top five business aviation companies, with six divisions utilizing many hangars spread over a 100-acre footprint.
Fifteen years ago, Don took his wife to Nigeria to show her the hospital compound his parents had founded in the 1950s and where he and his sisters had grown up. It had been 30-plus years since Don left Egbe, and no missionaries had been stationed at Egbe for the past 10 years. The hospital was operating as a clinic in ruins and on the verge of closing. Yet the need was immense. The closest hospital was 100 miles from the city and a three-hour drive over horrible roads. The School of Nursing was in the same dilapidated state, unable to pass its accreditation and doomed to be closed.
The only solution would be to revitalize the hospital and nursing school, but what did that have to do with Don? He is in aviation, not construction or medicine. Upon returning to their busy lives in Fort Lauderdale, in their quiet time, the condition of this hospital, which was once a Beacon of Hope for the whole region, kept coming to mind. The call was clear – will you rebuild, re-equip, and re-staff Egbe Hospital and the College of Nursing? Don's wife, his youngest sister, and Don stepped out in faith, and the past 14 years have been full of miracles.
Don formed a non-profit called Egbe Medical Misson to raise funds, recruit missionaries and volunteers and begin the monumental task of leading the revitalization.
Today, Egbe Hospital is caring for more than 30,000 patients and performing 1,200 surgeries a year. The hospital has a Family Medicine Residency program, and the college is training 450 nurses, graduating 100 a year.
With the continued growth of Banyan Air Service and the transformation of the Egbe Medical complex, Don is driven by integrity, teamwork and operational excellence. He believes that God blesses people and businesses that honor Him.
