L.L.Bean’s Gift to LifeFlight and All Who Love to Explore
Maine is a beautiful state. Mountains to summit in the spring and ski on during long winters. Rivers to fish once the snow melts. Islands to explore in the summer. Beaches to enjoy on hot days. Forests to hike through in the autumn.
It’s also the most rural state in the country in terms of percentage of the population that lives in a rural area. It has 36 hospitals, but only three trauma centers. 1.3 million people live here, but 15.3 million people visit this place every year. There is so much of Maine to explore, so many rugged places to discover, and one name that for a century has been practically synonymous with outdoor adventure: L.L.Bean.
L.L.Bean sells recreation equipment and clothing to prepare you for nearly any adventure in Maine. It also understands that you are likely to carry that gear into a community or remote corner of the state far from a major medical center. Recently, the Freeport-based company made a significant investment in LifeFlight of Maine to ensure that while you’re out there, you still have access to critical care in an emergency.
Each LifeFlight aircraft has a safety and survival kit with gear acquired from L.L.Bean. Each kit is labeled with the tail number of the aircraft.
L.L.Bean has donated more than $150,000 to LifeFlight in the past year to radically enhance the scope and impact of the LifeFlight Access Program.
Over the years, LifeFlight has compiled a database of designated landing areas across the State of Maine. These include hospital helipads, ball fields, roadside parking areas, rendezvous points along snowmobile trails, and small clearings deep in the woods. The goal is to always be prepared. LifeFlight works with 911 centers, first responder services, landowners, snowmobile associations, ski resorts, and members of the public to identify these locations. The hope is to never have to use them, of course, but better to be prepared and not needed than the alternative.
With support from L.L.Bean, LifeFlight hired Bill Yates to assess and make recommendations on how to expand and strengthen this important initiative. Bill is a licensed EMS clinician, a former ski patroller, and a former dispatcher for LifeFlight. He has a thorough understanding of EMS, first responder services, and, importantly, how communications work in an emergency situation. The LifeFlight Access Program is all about coordination among services and communities before an emergency arises, and Bill has the knowledge, experience, connections, and tenacity to advance this ambitious project for Maine.
While Bill works to enhance LifeFlight’s database of landing areas into a more powerful tool, his colleague Kyle Madigan, director of client relations at LifeFlight, is working with local fire, EMS, police, and other first responder services to provide on-the-ground training on how to identify and secure temporary helicopter landing areas (which then get added to LifeFlight’s database). Kyle, Bill, and the LifeFlight team offer a Ground Safety and User Course to first responders at no cost. The course is often offered several times a week, especially in the summer, in communities in every corner of the state.
Recently, thanks to L.L.Bean’s generosity, Kyle has been distributing ground safety kits designed specifically for interfacing air ambulance programs with first responders to ensure safe operations. These kits include LED lights to mark the boundaries of the landing area, information on how to communicate with the pilot, and other safety equipment for the first responders on the ground.
first responders in Harpswell after teaching a Ground Safety Course.
These initiatives are expanding rapid access to critical care in communities across Maine. Identifying how to help someone facing a medical emergency is crucial, and helping that person quickly can make all the difference. The care that someone receives in the first hour of a medical emergency has a tremendous impact on that patient’s outcomes, and most of Maine is more than an hour by car or ground ambulance from a trauma center. LifeFlight’s aircraft can cut the time it takes to cover those distances by more than two thirds. The aircraft also brings ICU-level care to the patient, so that person is receiving advanced medical care before they even arrive at one of Maine’s major medical centers.
In March 2024, Linda Bean passed away peacefully in her home on an island off the coast of Port Clyde, where she had lived for decades. The granddaughter of Leon Leonwood Bean and scion of the Bean family, Linda was a successful businesswoman, entrepreneur, patron of the arts, and generous benefactor to LifeFlight of Maine. “Linda’s support of LifeFlight and healthcare access overall was emblematic of her deep affection for the people of Maine,” said Tom Judge, founding executive director of LifeFlight and a longtime friend to Linda. “She was a woman of action, and her generosity and spirit have impacted thousands of lives here in Maine.”
L.L.Bean’s most recent donation to LifeFlight was made in Linda’s memory. The impact of that gift for the LifeFlight Access Program continues Linda’s legacy of support for healthcare access in communities like hers. It represents her abiding love for Maine and its people. In the years to come, hundreds of Mainers will have the gift of a second chance, thanks to the generosity of a family and a company whose backpacks they carried to school, whose boots they have worn on every adventure, and whose love for Maine they share to their core.
