Heart Transplant Gives Jet Sales Leader New Lease on Life

For more than a decade, his day job has hinged on helping discerning clients secure just the right aircraft on just the right terms. But after doctors told Don Dwyer he needed a new heart, the task of accessing infinitely hard-to-source critical resources took on a whole new level of intensity.

Guardian Jet’s managing partner received his new heart in May and is now on a recovery path he has embraced with a renewed sense of gratitude. The procedure at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville has given Dwyer a new lease on life, after years when amyloidosis—in which protein deposits undermine the effectiveness of heart muscles—presented the chilling prospect that his days might be numbered.

In the initial stages of care at Yale New Haven Hospital near his home in Connecticut, it became all too apparent that while surgeons with the right skills were in ready supply, replacement hearts were not. “I’d been on the waiting list for five months and was told it could be at least another year to wait for a heart and that I would likely get sicker,” Dwyer told AIN. “That’s when I started doing research [to find where a heart could be more readily sourced.]”

Dwyer—a singularly popular and habitually upbeat figure in the industry—takes nothing for granted and is profoundly thankful for his survival. His role at Guardian Jet, which he runs with his brother Mike and other family members, continues to be a core motivator as his recovery progresses. That said, he freely admits that his perspective has been profoundly recalibrated by what he’s been through.

Support and encouragement have been abundantly forthcoming from across the business aviation community. Friends, colleagues, and competitors all echo their admiration for how this successful and widely-respected entrepreneur is dealing with such a critical ordeal.

“It’s surreal when they tell you that you need a new heart,” he reflected. “These days, the procedure has a 90% success rate, but it makes you take stock. There is no time to adjust, and everything unimportant is stripped away. To be honest, it’s so much harder on the caregivers. I had a good attitude throughout: I call it embracing the suck.”

Part of this embrace has been some curious twists of fate along the way. After coming out of Vanderbilt’s intensive care unit, a nurse came into his room and told him, “There’s a guy down the hall who sells jets.” That guy is Steven Nix, who gave up a career in the music business to work with Vertical Jet Sales, only to discover that he, too, needed a new heart.

The two men have found plenty of common ground in their recovery process. And Dwyer says there is still a big place in his heart for the industry in which he has found success.

“I love this industry and the day I started selling airplanes changed my life,” he reflected. His role with Guardian Jet seems set to be more advisory going forward, which makes him thankful for the next generation of professionals the company has brought through the ranks.

The heart transplant journey has dominated his life for the past three years, and Dwyer declared himself to be entirely comfortable with whatever the future brings. “Now it’s really a case of how do I grow old graciously and stay relevant,” he chuckled. “I’m surprised at how happy I am.”