Harrison Ford will receive an award for his philanthropy Tuesday night from the global surgery and training nonprofit Operation Smile. But the star of the “Indiana Jones” and “Star Wars” film franchises, as well as this year’s “Captain America: Brave New World,” says all the attention should go to the award’s namesake – Ford’s friend, the late humanitarian and noted plastic surgeon Dr. Randy Sherman.
Like Ford, Sherman, who was director of the Cedars-Sinai Division of Plastic Surgery in Los Angeles and a specialist in reconstructive surgery who developed numerous training programs, was an avid pilot and they bonded when they shared the same home airport. Sherman told Ford of his volunteer work with Operation Smile, providing cleft palate surgery to children in countries where access to such services is limited, and Angel Flight West, which provides free medical transportation to patients.
“The things that he contributed to my life and to my family’s lives are beyond anybody’s wildest imagination,” Ford said of Sherman, who died in 2023 when his plane experienced engine failure and crashed in New Mexico. “He was a very important person to me and, by the way, to all of the people that he’s associated with in the medical community. All of them recognize his selfless service.”
Dr. Billy Magee, Operation Smile’s chief medical officer, called it a joy to honor both men, pointing out that Sherman was a leader in cleft palate care and “a driving force behind Operation Smile’s work to expand access to surgical care closer to patients’ homes, even in the most remote corners of the world.”
“This award celebrates the spirit of compassion and dedication that both Harrison and Dr. Sherman embody,” said Magee, who recently announced Operation 100, which will equip 100 cleft operative teams in 100 hospitals around the world. “I can’t think of a more deserving recipient to carry that legacy forward.”
Ford recently spoke about receiving the Dr. Randy Sherman Visionary Award from Operation Smile and how he hopes it will inspire others to give what they can. The interview was edited for clarity and length.
Q: How did you get to know Dr. Sherman?
Ford: When the earthquake in Haiti struck (in 2010), I reached out to Randy and asked if he thought there was anything that we could do with an airplane that I had, which was particularly suited to the kind of work that’s done in these circumstances. He very quickly organized a mission with Operation Smile and he met me and my pilot, who was working for me at the time, Terry Bender. We flew my Cessna Caravan to Miami and picked up supplies and medical professionals — doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists — and flew to Port-au-Prince. We flew missions to bring supplies and medical personnel to a community called Hinche, in the highlands of Haiti, a town that had no airport but did have a field that we were able to land the aircraft in. We were there for about a week, going back and forth each day to Hinche to bring in supplies.
Q: What made you want to be a part of that — a dangerous mission under tough circumstances?
Ford: Well, I didn’t consider it to be dangerous. I considered it to be an opportunity to be able to use something that I had that was needed. The issue in Haiti was that when people were injured in the urban setting, there were no resources to treat them. They were then transported to the community that they grew up in… It was such a (expletive) in Port-au-Prince when we got there. Nobody knew what was going on. But we knew there was a hospital in Hinche that was staffed by two Cuban doctors and they had no supplies, no anesthetics. And because of the delay in assets reaching them, there were a lot of people suffering amputations and other very significant medical issues.
Q: What was it like to see philanthropy in action in that moment? It’s an example of something that the government is not going to handle. If the nonprofit doesn’t do it, it doesn’t get done.
Ford: Pilots are good citizens. They’re involved. They really are aware in many, many cases of the contributions they can make with their resources and their skills… This is not all altruism. We do want people to understand the positive values of general aviation and what they bring to a community. The freedom to fly in the United States is unequaled around the world, to my understanding. And the preservation of that freedom is really important to me and others. So we want to demonstrate our positive contribution to the community.
Q: You don’t talk about your philanthropy much, especially what you do to fight climate change. Do you feel that should get more attention?
Ford: I think it gets attention when it needs to be recognized — not my work, but the issues I’m talking about. I’ve been working in conservation for 35 years with an organization called Conservation International. We work internationally, as the name suggests. The only work we do here in the United States is fundraising. And we’re under enormous threat now with the rise of nationalism and isolationism and all of the (expletive) that we’re suffering.
Q: Does that make your work even more pressing? Especially with the cuts to USAID that previously funded environmental work?
Ford: Of course. Yes. Members of the Republican Party and the administration had been enthusiastic about the importance of funding international conservation. In the last 10 years, we have had a real, substantial contribution from USAID addressing and mitigating issues that have suddenly disappeared from our moral flowchart. It just (expletive) disappeared. It’s a travesty. It’s a tragedy.
Q: Will Conservation International do something differently this year to make up for those cuts?
Ford: Unfortunately, we will not be able to do that because we don’t have extra funds to distribute. We don’t have the structures of a scientific community that have been established and nurtured and cultured over the years. They’ve been dissolved. We can’t do it.
Q: Do you hope the Operation Smile award and the attention that comes with it will convince some people to donate more?
Ford: I hope so. I hope it motivates some people to recognize they will have to create new mechanisms of funding and support. But we’re also disavowing science. We’re in such a fragile point of inflection here… There will be moments when all of us will be called upon to think about these things again and to make our individual efforts to address the imbalance of the situation that now exists. There are many people upset with this stuff. But will we coalesce around these things and become a political constituency, a moral army?
