{"id":31453,"date":"2026-07-22T18:01:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T18:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/?p=31453"},"modified":"2026-07-22T18:01:59","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T18:01:59","slug":"the-make-a-wish-flight-that-revealed-my-sons-secret-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/?p=31453","title":{"rendered":"The Make-A-Wish Flight That Revealed My Son&#8217;s Secret Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"\">Our son Mike&#8217;s Make-A-Wish flight to Disneyland became something else midair. The captain told passengers to check their seat pockets. Inside: crayon boarding passes\u2014crooked airplanes with no destination. Months earlier, Mike had drawn one for a mute boy named Nolan in the hospital. &#8220;Pretend we&#8217;re on vacation,&#8221; he&#8217;d said. That pass birthed a hospital tradition, then spread to Wish flights worldwide. That day, every passenger held one. Strangers wept. Mike waved; the whole plane waved back. He died that winter. Days later, a scrapbook arrived\u2014notes from every passenger, and Nolan&#8217;s original pass, saved. On it, someone had written:\u00a0<\/span><em><span class=\"\">Hope sometimes arrives before the plane does.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our son Mike&#8217;s Make-A-Wish flight to Disneyland became something else midair. The captain told passengers to check their seat pockets. Inside: crayon boarding passes\u2014crooked airplanes with no destination. Months earlier, Mike had drawn one for a mute boy named Nolan in the hospital. &#8220;Pretend we&#8217;re on vacation,&#8221; he&#8217;d said. That pass birthed a hospital tradition,&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/albotips.com\/?p=31453\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;The Make-A-Wish Flight That Revealed My Son&#8217;s Secret Legacy&rdquo;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31454,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31455,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31453\/revisions\/31455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}