A Windham teen recently returned home after spending two weeks jet-setting up and down the Eastern Seaboard and hanging out with people like Miss America and President George W. Bush.

“He’s pretty short,” said Logan Jordan, 14, of the president.

The Windham Middle School student served as the ambassador for Maine during the Champions Across America 2007 program from the Children’s Miracle Network.

Children’s Miracle Network is an alliance of leading children’s hospitals. Champions Across America takes one child from each state to Washington D.C., and Walt Disney World in Florida.

Jordan has hypoplastic left heart syndrome, where the left side of his heart doesn’t function. He had heart surgery less than a week after he was born and uses a pacemaker.

The condition is usually fatal within the first few days of life if left untreated, according to the American Heart Association’s Web site. Jordan has had a handful of operations over the years and sees a cardiologist every six months. He is also a candidate for a heart transplant.

“I want to get it done, but it’s scary,” he said.

“He can do pretty much anything on some level,” said Mike Jordan, Logan’s father. The soft-spoken eighth-grader plays hockey and baseball and likes video games, spending time with friends and watches professional wrestling. He helps manage the middle school’s wrestling team and has served as team captain, but does not wrestle in tournaments, only warm-up exercises.

Because half of his heart does the work of both sides, Jordan has to play it cool and keep his heart rate down. He can do chores like mowing the lawn or shoveling snow, but he has to limit the amount of time he commits to them.

Mike Jordan said he thought his son was chosen to represent Maine because he volunteers so often with the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital at Maine Medical Center in Portland. Logan is involved with the Children’s Miracle Network’s annual telethon and hosts a wiffleball fundraising tournament each year in his back yard.

Stephen Napolitano, owner of the Dairy Queen in North Windham, has known Jordan for a few years. One day every year in August all the sales from Blizzard desserts goes to the Children’s Miracle Network.

“Last year, we had invited Logan to work at our store for our Miracle Treat Day,” said Napolitano. Jordan had pledged to spend an hour or two filling cones and cups and dealing with customers.

“He ended up staying four or five hours,” said Napolitano.

He added that Jordan was “very aware of the customers’ needs, very kind and very polite.”

Logan Jordan, his father and mother, Elaine Jordan, and his sister Lexie, 8, had their airfare and hotel rooms provided by the charity when they headed to the nation’s capital on Wednesday, March 28.

The kids had different disabilities, said Jordan, but they were still kids and liked to joke around with each other.

“There was a boy with one arm,” said Jordan, “and I asked him why he wasn’t clapping.”

Jordan said friendly ribbing took place among most of the kids.

“They’d be like, ‘Yeah, go have a heart attack,'” he said. Nothing was taboo and there were no disabilities the kids couldn’t laugh off.

“If they can laugh about it, why can’t we?” said Elaine Jordan. “The kids really set the pace.” She said the way the kids would combat their conditions with humor was uplifting.

Miss America, Lauren Nelson, and country music singer Richie McDonald were with them the entire trip. They met with politicians like U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and President Bush and saw monuments and a zoo. There was a private concert from the 80s band Air Supply for the children and their parents, and on Saturday, March 31, they all left for Florida.

For the next five days they stayed at Disney World, where Mike Jordan said the kids from different states really started to bond with each other. In Washington, the kids, all between the ages of 3 and 17, mostly stuck with their parents, but branched out more when they reached Florida.

Logan Jordan said he made friends with a number of the kids and still talks to them online. He said he got to explore Disney World with his friends without his parents tagging along.

The program wrapped up on Thursday, April 5. Jordan said all the other New England kids were much younger, but hopes to meet up with his friends from places like Indiana, Michigan and Alaska again.

Jordan1: Logan Jordan and his family pose with with Maine Senator Olympia Snowe in Washington DC. From Left: Mike Jordan, Lexie Jordan, Olympia Snowe, Logan Jordan and Elaine Jordan.Jordan2: Logan Jordan (fourth from left) and some other kids represented their home states at the Children’s Miracle Network’s Champions Across America 2007 program in Washington DC and Florida.Jordan3: Logan Jordan, 14, with his entry in the spiral-bound information book he received as the Maine representative for the Children’s Miracle Network’s Champions Across America 2007.Jordan4-5: Logan Jordan, 14, with the pines he received from all 50 states in Washinton DC when acting as the Maine representative for the Children’s Miracle Network’s Champions Across America 2007.Jordan4-5: Logan Jordan, 14, with the pines he received from all 50 states in Washinton DC when acting as the Maine representative for the Children’s Miracle Network’s Champions Across America 2007.