Landscaper offers aid to Haiti on "Eagle Wings"

Scott Lewis, 52, and his wife Carol run 35-year-old Scott Lewis’ Garden & Trimming, Inc., in West Palm Beach, FL. His name was mentioned in a short article in a south Florida newspaper concerning volunteer aid to Haiti. Curious we investigated further and discovered a person with a remarkable desire to help his fellow man.

Lewis, a landscape architect and long-time volunteer fire fighter, is the founder of the Eagle Wings Foundation, a non-profit agency that provides disaster relief in hard hit areas of the Western Hemisphere. He founded the Foundation in 1999 after learning that donations were not reaching survivors in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, which devastated The Bahamas.

Since then he and his all-volunteer task force have been in the forefront of disaster relief efforts in Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne (2004), Katrina (2005), and Hurricane Ike (2008), and these past weeks — Haiti.

These are not a bunch of do-gooders that hamper disaster relief, but a well-trained team of volunteers that mesh into and provide valuable on-the-ground services as part of larger disaster-recovery efforts.

But even before founding the Eagle Wings Foundation, Lewis was actively involved in rescue and disaster efforts, and holds just about every certification you can imagine to personnel involved in such work. In 1992 he served as a disaster team unit leader in the initial emergency efforts at the University of Miami Arboretum and the President’s residence in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew that flattened Homestead, FL. — Ron Hall