Page 14 - June24T

updated and reprinted from Oct. 2022 T&T.
Banyan Air Service
How it Began and Where We’re Going by Lance Phillips
GeorgPe Campion in younger years taking care of a local child in Nigeria
eople are more important than profits. This is just one of the phrases deemed important by the founder of Banyan Air Service, Don Campion. However, rather
than just a nice-sounding saying to go in the values section of his company’s website, that phrase has been instilled in Don Campion his whole life by none other than his parents, George and Esther.
The senior Campions met as teenagers and both attend- ed college in Toronto, Canada; George became a medical doctor and interned at St. Michael’s Hospital, while Esther earned a degree in nursing from the Toronto General Hospital School of Nursing. They married in 1949 and joined the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) group of medical missionaries, traveling by ship to Nigeria after months of specialized training. A large bulk of the remainder of their lives would be spent serving the people of Egbe, Nigeria, a small town inland from Lagos to the northeast, across the Niger River. Their faith, drive to help people, and desire to work in a team environment would inform
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George Campion in later years
their son, Don, one of four kids, on how to live his life and pursue success.
Don got his first taste of private aviation while attend- ing a boarding school in Nigeria while his parents toiled in their small medical village, building from scratch the infrastructure needed to serve and support the people of Egbe. The little Cessnas and Pipers used to get Don back and forth between home and school lit a passion for aviation that would later steer his decisions in life and career. Don told TwoTen Magazine in 2016, “I loved watching the missionary planes fly in and land on the grass airstrip next to the hospital. They would pick up a group of us missionary kids and fly us to the school. That’s where my love of aviation and my desire to make it a career started.”
After primary school in Nigeria, Don attended Seneca College in Toronto, Canada, earning a pilot’s license and a degree in aviation. On school breaks, Don spent lots of time in Florida with school friends and began