Meet the pilot who weaves messages of hope in skies over Naples

The pilot who earlier this month wrote "LOVE GOD" over Naples says he does so from divine inspiration. 

Jerry Stevens, 75, of Orlando, zoomed high above in a one-seat former crop-dusting plane converted into a skywriter to scrawl the message, similar to many he's created over Florida for more than two decades.

That's when Stevens gave up his lifelong hobby — flying airplanes — and a month later was standing in church when he says he received a message of his own.

“Jesus told me, ‘You’re good at flying. You should put your talents to use,’ ” he said in a recent telephone interview.

After that service, he said, he was browsing in a bookstore when out of the corner of his eye he spotted a magazine that said, in big, bold letters, “skywriting.” Stevens said he read the article and felt Jesus tell him to fill the sky with messages of hope.

His next step was to find a skywriting plane. He met a man through an aviation magazine called “Trade-A-Plane” who was selling his little one-seater crop-dusting plane. Stevens bought it, and, with a few modifications, turned it into a canary yellow skywriting planehe named "Holy Smoke."

The man also offered to introduce Stevens to someone in Florida who could teach him the skywrite. That person ended up being the man on the cover of the magazine that led Stevens to skywriting.

He said the messages have nothing to with him, but that God is the one who has passed the writings along through him.

“If I was to talk to someone on the street about Jesus, they would probably run away,” Stevens said.

“But his messages in the sky are so intriguing. They draw people in. It’s all about God’s love. He loves us so much that he’s got this guy in Florida who’s writing messages in the sky because God loves us.”

Stevens compares the messages he writes to notes you would leave for a loved one.

“God’s putting big Post-it notes up in the sky to tell us how much he loves us,” he said. “He’ll put joy in your life.”

These messages are usually about 7 miles long, with each letter or symbol three-fourths of a mile high. He’s left messages in the sky all over Florida, from Naples and Fort Myers to Sarasota, West Palm Beach, Tampa and Orlando.

Every message comes from God, he said. Stevens prays for God to reveal a message to him, and Stevens obeys.

“I wish I was creative enough to think of it on my own,” Stevens said. “He’s got a good sense of humor with the happy face.”

The sky pilot said God told him and his wife, Kathy, to move from Boca Raton to Orlando to leave messages in the sky for the millions of theme park visitors who inhabit Orlando every day.

The skywriting is made possible through sponsors who donate to Stevens’ ministry, “Holy Smoke,” a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Holy Smoke doesn’t have a website or fundraisers of any kind because, Stevens said, he wants the focus to be on God and not on him.

However, he said he always needs sponsors, and that God sends them to him. One of those sponsors is what brought him to Naples earlier this month.

“We have a really nice couple there who are new sponsors,” Stevens said. “So, we flew to Naples to show them what they’re sponsoring.”

Stevens said he knows of two cases in which people were ready to end their lives before seeing the messages in the sky. The people went to great lengths to find him, even calling local airports to ask if any skywriters had been there that day.

“It’s not really about me. I’m not really important in this picture,” Stevens said. “Me, the airplane, it’s all on the surface. This is a love story about how much God loves us.”