2011 St. Patrick's Day Balloon Rallye Program

St. Patrick’s DayBalloon Rallye

March 19 2011

News-BulletinVALENCIA COUNTY

2 • 2011 St. Patrick’s Day Balloon Rallye • Valencia County News-Bulletin • March 16, 2011

St. Patrick’s Day Balloon Rallye still flying high in its 27th yearBy Julia M. DenDingerNews-Bulletin Staff [email protected]

BelenThe St. Patrick’s Day Invitational

Balloon Rallye is in its 27th year and organizers say it still hasn’t lost its shine.

The annual event will be taking off from Eagle Park in Belen this year, spot-ting the sky with rainbows filled with hot air.

Grant Crawford, organizer and char-ter member of the Valencia Flying and Retrieval Society, said the organizers are thrilled to be flying out of Belen again. The society itself has been in existence for 27 years and hosting the Rallye every year.

“The city wants us, we want to come and people are open to it,” Crawford said. “They are excited and love the bal-loons. We want to bring a little bit more joy to folks. Ballooning appeals to every-one, from 80 on down.”

Crawford said the city of Belen is let-ting the VFRS use Eagle Park with the caveat that they clean up when they’re done.

“Balloonists, in general, leave a place cleaner than it was,” he said. “For one thing, we need a clean field. We can’t lay out (the balloons) in all kinds of junk. And we don’t want people saying, ‘Those dog-goned balloonists. Look at the mess they left.’”

The Rallye will only be one day this year, Crawford said. Over the last several years, the event has had to cut back from two days of flying to just one. It’s a sign of the times and the down economy, he said.

“We have lots of volunteer time, but no money,” he said. “We have a couple of sponsors to help pay for propane and are hoping to get more.”

Crawford said sponsors are important to help offset the cost of these events, because often balloonists have already invested $30,000 to $40,000 just in

their equipment. This year, the Rallye is charging a fee of $40 per balloonist to offset the cost of the propane.

“People are always willing to help,” he said. “A ballooning buddy from Oklahoma is chipping in $250 and he’s not even going to make it.”

But there will be pilots coming in

from Lubbock, El Paso and Colorado, Crawford said. In addition to the regular balloons, there will be six special shape balloons at the Rallye, including Smokey Bear, Squawk the Parrot, Space Shuttle and, making its first appearance ever, a lighthouse.

“Some of these are world-famous bal-

loons that winter here,” Crawford said. And Crawford said that not only is

everyone invited to come and watch the balloons launch, they are also encour-aged to volunteer.

“Folks are invited to come out and help — no experience necessary,” he laughed. “We’ll teach you how to do it. These events are great because it gets people up close and personal with the balloons.”

For their trouble, volunteers will get lunch, along with the crew and pilots, Crawford said.

“The the whole objective is to have the people of the city join in, help us and enjoy the balloons,” he said. “In a lot of little towns, people have never even seen one.”

Crawford said Eagle Park was a great place to fly from.

“There’s a lot of great air space. We can go north, south, east or west,” he said. “The only thing we really need to watch out for is the airport and even that’s not a problem — we’re an air-craft!”

The official day of the Rallye is Saturday, March 19, but Crawford said balloonists will fly the day before, March 18 for a media and sponsor day.

Saturday morning, weather permitting, the balloons will launch around 7:30 a.m. If you want to help out, Crawford advised coming out to the field at least an hour before launch.

“Some of the balloons will stay on the ground. Sunday is our emergency contin-gency day for flying if we can’t launch on Saturday,” he said. “And there will probably be some balloonists who stick around to fly on Sunday, just for fun.”

Crawford said the VFRS is expecting 25 to 30 balloons.

“We want to keep this going, so we keep coming back. We want to be able to bring it back to a two- or three-day event. To do that we need more sponsors, and of course having the community of Belen get involved is great,” he said. “We certainly are not going to let it die.”

Schedule of Events Note: All flights are weather permitting and at pilot’s

discretion Friday, March 187 a.m.: Media/sponsor flights; pilot briefing at Eagle

Park7:30 a.m.: Balloon launches

Saturday, March 19 6:30 a.m.: Pilot sign-in and donation drop-off7 a.m.: Mandatory pilot briefing at Eagle Park7:30 a.m.: Balloon launches

8-9:30 am: Special shapes display/tether 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.: Propane at off-site locations10 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Tailgate party at Eagle Park picnic

shelter

Sunday, March 207 a.m.: Back-up and media/sponsor flights; pilot

briefing at Eagle Park7:30 a.m.: Balloon launches

Directions to Eagle ParkTake Interstate 25 to Exit 191, Camino Del LlanoGo east on Camino Del Llano 0.5 miles to the four-

way stop at South Mesa Road (Ignore the sign to Eagle Park immediately after you leave I-25. That is the pub-lic entrance.)

Go left, north, on South Mesa Road 0.4 miles to the four-way stop at Delgado Street.

Go left, west, 0.2 miles on Delgado St. to the Belen High School entrance. Take a right, north, immediately before the High School entrance.

Follow this road around to the north of the Community Center Building and continue west to Eagle Park.

THE OFFICIAL T-SHIRT for the 27th annual St. Patrick’s Day Balloon Rallye features special shapes such as Smokey Bear, a lighthouse, and a crowd favorite, the chile ristra, owned by Mike Shrum.

27th annual St. Patrick’S Day invitational Balloon rallye

Presented by the Valencia Flying and Retrieval Society

March 16, 2011 • Valencia County News-Bulletin • 2011 St. Patrick’s Day Balloon Rallye • 3

Submitted photo

GRANT CRAWFORD’S hot air balloon Jr. can be seen in the skies over Belen next weekend at the annual St. Patrick’s Day Invitational Balloon Rallye.

Crawford’s last 32 years are centered around flyingBy Julia M. DenDingerNews-Bulletin Staff [email protected]

You would think after 32 years of hanging around in the air, Grant Crawford Sr. would eventually come down to earth. That’s not likely to hap-pen, he says.

“I love it. I can’t see myself doing any-thing else,” Crawford said.

“It” is piloting a hot air balloon. Way back in 1979, Crawford got his

first taste of hot air and nylon. “My wife made me do it. I was run-

ning an insurance agency and a client had a hot air balloon,” he said. “We were out in Rio Rancho and he wanted to go flying, and my wife wanted to go up.”

Now getting up on a Saturday, before dawn, to “go chase balloons” didn’t exactly sound like a lot of fun to Crawford.

“I played golf,” he said, laughing. In the interest of domestic relations, he

and his wife, Peaches, and their 8-year-old son went out to chase some bal-loons. When they got there, according to Crawford, Peaches had a change of heart, but their son didn’t.

“She realized how high they go and she’s afraid of heights, but our son went,” Crawford said.

But if the 8-year-old could handle it, so could she. And that was the beginning for both of them.

“We were hooked; we’d crew for peo-ple and help out, but then I said, ‘This is not going work. I have to do it,’” he said. “I’m a bit of a control freak.”

Piloting his own balloon changed everything, Crawford said.

“It became a family event. We were a team,” he said. “Before everybody just went off and did their own thing.”

Several years went by and Crawford found himself working for Mountain Bell as a financial planner and “bored to tears. I wanted to go fly.”

He pitched the idea of being a full-time balloon pilot to Peaches.

“She asked me, ‘Can you even make a living at that?’ And I said, ‘Well, yeah,’” Crawford said.

Crawford had come across the oppor-tunity to be a contract pilot for a com-pany out of Texas.

Over the years, he flew the chair-man of the board for Revlon, actor Ron Perlman and members of the San Antonio Spurs.

“We flew a lot of VIPs,” he said. “I was having a great time with my life.”

But then things changed and hot air balloon rides stopped being “the big

thing” to do in marketing.But by then he’d come in contact with

a little company called Prime Star, the direct broadcast satellite company. The company, which was up and going strong in the early ’90s, was looking to expand its territory in New Mexico.

“I was talking to one of their guys and was offered the entire Farmington territory. No one wanted Farmington,” Crawford said. “Well, I did. I’d flown out there, and there are great people and not a lot of TV reception.”

Crawford soon became the No. 1 sales-man in the nation. But knowing you could only sell so many satellite systems, Crawford kept flying and eventually established a beef jerky business, New Mexico Foods, in Peralta, that he still owns and operates.

Always a “free spirit,” Crawford says that kind of attitude goes hand-in-hand with ballooning.

“That’s part of the sport, with the wind. You go where the good Lord wants you,” he says with a grin. “You’ll never get bored flying balloons. The people you meet, it gives you so much pleasure, it’s so much fun. But like they say, the first ride is free. The next one will cost you $30,000.”

Since 1979, both Crawford and Peaches have earned their pilot’s licenses. One might ask if she got over her fear of heights. Crawford says that’s not it at all.

“It’s not that people are afraid of heights. It’s edges,” he said. “When you’re standing on the edge of some-thing, it’s a long way down. But when you’re in the basket, you’re just up there with everything else.”

GRANT CRAWFORD has been balloon-ing for 32 years. Today, Crawford, a charter member of the Valencia Flying and Retrieval Society, helps to coor-dinate the annual St. Patrick’s Day Invitational Balloon Rallye.

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For some, the thrill is in the chase in hot air ballooningBy Brent ruffnerNews-Bulletin Staff [email protected]

belenThis year’s St. Patrick’s Day

Invitational Balloon Rallye will have some awesome sights for residents, with more than 40 balloons including the Space Shuttle and Smokey Bear.

But some residents will fly high from a different vantage point.

Cheryl Ryder is among those who will likely be content staying on the ground for the March 19 event at Eagle Park in Belen.

Ryder, who is a member of the Valencia Flying and Retrieval Society, said she decided to be exclusively a part of chase crews after she discovered she lacked qualities to be a pilot.

Chase crews ride along in a vehicle and follow balloons around to know where they land. Chase crews typically are involved in getting the balloon ready to fly and putting equipment away after the day’s events are over.

“I made the decision after I watched pilots go through what they go through that crewing was my niche,” Ryder said. “I love to crew. I don’t have the tempera-ment to be a good pilot.”

Ryder discovered the art of balloon-ing about 20 years ago when she and her husband, Marty, were invited to fly in a hot air balloon in the San Francisco Bay area.

But she said she wasn’t quite ready to make ballooning a part of her life when she first began participating in the sport.

“I had never been in a balloon in my life,” Ryder said. “I was scared to death. Good pilot, good teacher. But the first time I was hooked.”

In 2001, the couple moved to Valencia County where they joined the Valencia Flying and Retrieval Society, a group that allowed Ryder to share the spirit of togetherness.

Ryder said chase crew work isn’t easy. She said balloon material could weigh as much as 900 pounds and take several

people to stretch out fabric and make sure the burners are firing properly.

“I like working on a team where we are all focused on getting a job done,” Ryder said. “I like the feeling of working on a team where everyone is focused on a job. Nobody’s focusing on personali-ties, Nobody is focused on egos.”

But Ryder said sometimes the team’s focus is beyond their control.

She said balloonists attempt a “splash and dash” where the balloon basket is dipped in the Rio Grande.

“They drop below the tree line,” Ryder said. “It’s the biggest nerve-racking thing, losing sight of the balloon.”

Balloonist Grant Crawford said chase crews have gotten him out of some sticky situations on occasion. He said chase crews are an essential part of the

sport. He owns a balloon called Jr. that is 70,000 cubic feet.

“Without chase crews, you couldn’t fly,” Crawford said. “I couldn’t put it up by myself. You have to have a team to put it together.”

Crawford said he was thankful for crews in instances where there wasn’t a road for the chase crew.

“They have walked us out of (places that were inaccessible,)” Crawford said. “I would have had to carry that puppy out. Man, you are glad you had a crew.”

Not all experiences go to the extremes. Most trips end with the balloon going

down in a backyard or a field where the crews can easily get to the riders and put the equipment away for the day.

Ryder said she likes teaching young people about balloons at events. She said

she gives kids a chance to look inside the balloon and to pull the burner control before a flight.

“There is just something about getting out there on a cold morning and watch-ing the sun come up,” Ryder said. “The desert provides these spectacular dawn-ings. I’m part of the crew because I like doing this. I don’t have to have (a bal-loon) ride to get the excitement out of it.”

Belen resident Jody Skelton is exactly the opposite.

Skelton started ballooning in 1994 after a friend introduced her to the sport. She said she had to chase for awhile before she got to take her first flight and would never turn down a balloon ride.

“It’s an awesome feeling. I love it.” Skelton said.

News-Bulletin file photo

CHASE CREWS are an essential part of ballooning. They are responsible for making sure the balloon is packed away safely.

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Gerry Graff, Albuquerque, Lofty LindstarBud Hebrlee, Albuquerque, Aerloon

Mark Heideman, Albuquerque, Viking MagicRoger K. Hoppe, Albuquerque, Volcanic Motion

Richard Hueschen, Cedar Crest, TootsHank Humiston, Albuquerque, Goodazne

Michael Korfe, Albuquerque, Buzzin RoundMatthew Kromeke, Rio Rancho, Third ChildPatrick Lamb, Albuquerque, A Loan At Last

Fred Lete, Rio Rancho, Splash!Albert Lowenstein, Albuquerque, Sunset Rise

Robert Lupton, Albuquerque, Last DanceSally Lupton, Albuquerque, Last Dance

William Manus, Albuquerque, Shadow DancerDon Martindell, Albuquerque, Dawn Song II

Judy Nakamura, Albuquerque, BounceClarke O’Byrne, Albuquerque, Viento Encantado

Ken Paulk, Albuquerque, Angel DanZerLichelle Peete, Albuquerque, AirRageous

Lori Pitman, Albuquerque, Black Magic WomanDon Rose, Albuquerque, Dances With WindJane Schill, Albuquerque, Whistpering Spirit

Rick Schmidt, Belen, SnaggletoothTom Schroeder, Albuquerque, Pirate’s Treasure

Michael Shrum, Socorro, La Ristra (Special Shape)Michael Shrum, Socorro, Flight House (Special Shape)Slagle-Poteet Mary Ann, Wolfforth, Texas, Magic Toy

Orbin Stone, Las Cruces, Blue Southern AngelAlan Wynn, Albuquerque, Smokey Bear (Special Shape)

List of pilots, balloons for 2011 St. Patrick’s Day

Invitational Balloon Rallye

By Curt GustafsonNews-Bulletin Staff [email protected]

SocorroWhen he first got bitten by the

ballooning bug, Mike Shrum was perfectly content to pilot the common inverted teardrop balloon.

“As the saying goes, your first ride’s for free,” Shrum said. “Your next one costs you $30,000 when you go out and buy one. And that’s exactly what happened to me.”

There is nothing else in life that compares to the tranquility of a bal-loon ride, he said.

“When the balloon is up there floating and you’re not activating the burners, it is so quiet you can hear everything, the birds chirping, people talking on the ground,” Shrum said. “And you get a bird’s eye view of the great state we live in.”

Shrum spent the first three years as a balloon pilot enjoying flying the conventional-shaped balloon.

But then, while hosting a ballooning event in Socorro, he became intrigued by the prospect of flying a special-shape balloon, which not only offers a greater challenge to the pilot, but has a greater ability to catch the specta-tor’s eye.

“I live in Socorro, and for nine years I put on a balloon event,” Shrum said. “The first year I did it, I convinced the guy who was flying the chile ris-tra balloon to come to the event.

“As with most activities in this state, once you get back to the field, you tailgate and tell stories — the same as any other sport, I suppose. I said to him, ‘If you want to sell me that bal-loon, give me a call.’ Well, in 2001, I got that phone call.”

Ever since, Shrum has proudly flown perhaps the most iconic symbol of New Mexico at events throughout the country.

“There’s no other special shape that represents the state as well as this one does,” Shrum said.

With his acquisition of La Ristra, Shrum has become enamored with the challenges of flying special-shape balloons.

“With a special shape, it’s designed not with the optimum lift capacity in mind,” Shrum said. “It’s designed for appealing to the public’s eye.”

So Shrum comes armed with charts that tell him what he’s up against to get a special shape balloon off the ground.

Special shapes tend to be heavier and not aerodynamically sleek, so the lift can be limited, even under the best of circumstances.

“It’s all based on how hot you have

to get the inside of the balloon versus the ambient temperature and how much weight you’re trying to lift,” he said.

For example, with a 40-degree out-side temperature, a balloon might be able to get 1,000 feet off the ground, where a 75-degree temperature might get the same balloon 500 feet up, Shrum said.

Through his travels, Shrum has met another special-shape enthusiast, Barry Dilivero.

“I became friends with him, and as time went on, I started flying his bal-loons for him,” Shrum said.

One of these balloons is the space shuttle, which is the tallest hot air bal-loon in the United States at 186 feet.

Shrum has brought the balloon to the St. Patrick’s Day Invitational Balloon Rallye and will bring it again if he can find a pilot qualified to fly it.

In addition to his La Ristra, Shrum will bring another of Dilivero’s bal-loons, the Flight House, which is designed after an actual lighthouse on one of the Great Lakes.

But Shrum’s pride and joy is still the ristra, made up of 56 chiles that make up a balloon that is 128 feet tall.

And how can a reader put some visual perspective to that size?

“If you were to take my chile ristra and chop it up and process it, it would make 17 million jars of salsa.”


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Submitted photo

MIKE SHRUM stands in the basket from one of his special-shape hot air balloons. Shrum is attracted to the challenges of fly-ing the balloons, which appeal to the spectator’s eyes.

Special-shape balloons are Mike Shrum’s specialty



THE SPACE SHUTTLE balloon takes to the air at a previous St. Patrick’s Day Balloon Rallye. The balloon is the tallest balloon in the United States.


MIKE SHRUM’S LA RISTRA takes flight at a previous St. Patrick’s Day Balloon Rallye. The balloon, which stands 128 feet in height and has 56 chiles, will be at this year’s event.

Submitted photo

MIKE SHRUM will bring the Flight House balloon to the St. Patrick’s Day Balloon Rallye. It is made from a likeness of a lighthouse on the Great Lakes.

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By DeBorah FoxNews-Bulletin Staff [email protected]

The sky isn’t the limit for Charity Crawford, one of the few female hot air balloon pilots.

She aims to eventually earn her gas balloon pilot’s license, and travel the world.

In a gas balloon, she’ll be able to fly across borders and large bodies of water. Hot air balloons are a start, but they can only stay up a short time, she said.

“There are gas balloons that are filled with either hydrogen or helium depend-ing on what country you’re in,” said Crawford. “In a gas balloon, you can fly for days. And I would love to learn how to fly a gas balloon. I’ve always been strangely fascinated by them. It would be awesome to fly for days instead of only a few hours.”

“The thing about a gas balloon too is, in a gas balloon you can do so many lev-els of altitude,” said Crawford’s husband, Grant “G” Crawford Jr. “You can hit wind speeds up to 70 mph. I mean, that’s cooking!”

Charity Crawford received her hot air

balloon pilot license last June, and will fly her own balloon in the annual St. Patrick’s Day Invitational Balloon Rallye March 19 at Eagle Park in Belen.

“Flying in a balloon, I always tell peo-ple, is like floating on a cloud,” she said. “It feels like what you would imagine sitting on a cloud, floating around would feel like. It’s peaceful. It’s very quiet.

“Quite literally, the only sounds are the sounds you produce. Your talking, the sound of the birds, the creaking of the wicker, other than that, it’s silent,” she said. “You can hear almost everything that goes on around you. You can hear people on the ground, you can hear dogs barking, you can hear the birds, you can hear almost anything, and you feel you can see forever.”

Crawford is ambitious to attain a life of sky-bound adventures. She has plans to fly over the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge in Taos, take a flight over the Sandia Mountains, and go to the Billings, Mont., balloon event to visit her best friend, Stephanie Kolczak.

“I want to travel and fly in new and different places,” she said. “In a balloon, you don’t even feel like you’re moving, unless you look at the ground. People are always amazed at how far you go in a

balloon, because you really don’t feel like you’re traveling at all. You just feel like you’re staying still, and the world is mov-ing beneath you.”

Crawford is not a starry-eyed dreamer. She’s a strong, level-headed woman determined to methodically accomplish her goals. Just like she wrangled her first flying lessons by being persistent, and working hard to earn her pilot’s license.

Amelia Earhart, the first aviatrix to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, is Crawford’s hero and role model.

“I absolutely love Amelia Earhart,” Crawford said. “I have always been fasci-nated by her.”

Crawford would like to meet more female pilots, and start an all-female “Powder Puff Rallye.”

“I had my first ride 11 years ago,” she said. “Pretty much from my first ride I was hooked.”

That first ride was with Grant Crawford Sr., whose son, G, she would


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Rallye is Charity Crawford’s first as licensed pilot

Photos courtesy of Roger Baldwin

CHARITY CRAWFORD, left, takes the first flight in her newly purchased balloon with fellow pilot Kelly Baldwin. They ascended from the Tomé Bowl.

BALLOONING IS THE ultimate team sport. It takes a team to get a balloon up, a ground crew to follow, and everyone helps pack up the balloon after landing. Charity Crawford’s crew get her ready for flight at Tomé Bowl.


Charity: Bought first balloonfrom PAGE 8

eventually wed.“I started crewing for his parents

whenever I could,” Crawford said. At the time, she was in college at

Western New Mexico University in Silver City.

When she moved to Albuquerque in 2004, she started crewing for the Crawfords more often, and then she began asking Grant Sr. to teach her to fly.

“He would always tell me, ‘Oh, I’ll teach you one day,’” she said.

In 2007, she met G, and they started dating. Soon after, the elder Crawford finally started to teach her to fly.

After that, she pursued official flight instruction.

Now that she is a pilot, she’s eager to fly on her own or with her friend, Kelly Baldwin, another hot air balloon pilot.

G won’t fly, but he is Crawford’s crew chief.

“I love to fly, and he loves to drive the truck,” she said. “So, it’s an activity where we both get to do what we enjoy.”

“I don’t fly,” said G. “But if she’s going to go, I’m going to go.”

“Ballooning is the ultimate team sport,” Crawford said. “It takes a team to get a balloon up. You have to have a crew of people.”

Last January, the couple purchased a 1997, 90,000-cubic-foot Lindstrand hot

air balloon. “The basket came with this one,” she

said. “A lot of pilots, when they sell there envelope, will keep their basket, but the pilot that I happened to buy this one from was selling the basket, too.”

She took her first flight in her very own balloon March 5 with Baldwin, She took off from the Tomé Bowl behind Las Maravillas subdivision.

“We’ve been trying to fly it, but the weather wasn’t cooperating,” she said.

She has already piloted a balloon by herself several times, and as a require-ment for her license.

“You’re required to know how to pilot the balloon by yourself before you take your check ride with your FAA exam-iner,” Crawford said. “You’re required to do at least one solo flight, which means that you have to be by yourself in the bal-loon, completely alone.”

Crawford wasn’t afraid, though.“It was a little unnerving, because

it’s the first time you’re in the basket by yourself,” Crawford said. “You’re it, but I actually really enjoy being in the balloon by myself.”

Crawford is a member and the web-master for the Valencia Flying and Retrieval Society, which puts on the Rallye every year. Their website is www.vfrsballoonclub.org.

CHARITY AND “G” CRAWFORD purchased the 1997, 90,000-cubic-foot Lindstrand hot air balloon in January, and prepare for its maiden flight.

MID-FLIGHT WITH the Manzano Mountains as a backdrop, Charity Crawford takes her recently purchased balloon on its maiden flight.

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By Curt GustafsonNews-Bulletin Staff [email protected]

AlbuquerqueBill Chappell and Smokey Bear had

come so far together, and here was Chappell holding on for dear life 700 feet above ground while his beloved Smokey Bear hot air balloon lay splattered on the side of a television tower.

“You never know what Mother Nature’s going to do,” Chappell said, recalling that frightful day more than six years ago. “And that’s one of the thrills of ballooning. Every trip is different.”

But Mother Nature gave Chappell a lot more than he bargained for after lifting off on the last day of the 2004 Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque.

“We got hit with a 40 or 50 mile-per-hour wind shear and it shuddered the bal-loon,” Chappell said.

It also sent the balloon directly at the 730-foot television tower.

It threw the balloon, which was also carrying 15- and 11-year-old brothers, into a maze of power lines and guy wires.

“The only thing I could do was try my damndest to get over it,” Chappell said. “I knew that at the speed we were mov-ing, if we hit the guy wires it would just shear the basket right off the envelope and we’d fall to the ground.”

Chappell maneuvered through the guy wires and poured the propane to the bal-loon, realizing that if the balloon got too hot, it would burn up.

Chappell cleared all but 30 feet of the tower.

“We smacked it and the envelope exploded — all of the air gushing out of it,” Chappell said. “It enveloped the tower,” and left Chappell and the two boys clinging to the tower in the basket 700 feet up.

The three would eventually scramble down the tower’s ladder to safety.

A fellow pilot immediately got Chappell up in the air again.

“It helped to get out the jitters,” he said.

“That reassured me and did the trick.”It was then a matter of talking to all of

those responsible for the Smokey Bear balloon to determine if there would be a replacement.

“And they said yes,” Chappell said, tears welling up in his eyes. “They said, ‘You got to do it,’ so we’re still doing it.”

The first balloon was an engineering marvel and a product of Chappell’s per-severance.

Ballooning almost literally fell into his lap.

Shortly after moving to New Mexico as

a firefighter and fire prevention officer for the U.S. Forest Service in the mid-1970s, a balloon landed right next to his home in Corrales.

“The pilot was very friendly,” he said. “One thing led to another. He gave me a ride, and that was it. I was hooked.”

After becoming a pilot and realizing how easily people, particularly children, were attracted to balloons, Chappell decided that a Smokey Bear balloon would be a perfect way of furthering the Forest Service’s fire prevention message.

“Of course, the palace guards of the

Forest Service being a very conservative agency, they were dead set against it,” Chappell said. “It was the stone wall that makes life a challenge. I’ve never been known to give up on anything.

“So, 17 years after I began the idea, we had a Smokey Bear balloon.”

Chappell’s full-time job with the Forest Service then became making the balloon a reality.

His challenge was to complete the task by the 1993 Balloon Fiesta, which would

Curt Gustafson-News-Bulletin photo

BILL CHAPPELL stands next to memorabilia of the Smokey Bear balloon he was instrumental in creating. Over his right shoul-der is a picture of the first launching of the balloon in 1993.


n See Smokey, Page 11

Smokey Bear, Bill Chappell back from 2004 crash

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be Smokey’s 50th anniversary.“The Washington office challenged

each region to come up with a 50th anniversary sponsorship idea,” he said. “Well, I was in the right place at the right time doing the right job. So natu-rally, I submitted a Smokey Bear bal-loon to begin the 50th anniversary and celebrate together with all of the mass of folks who come together at the Fiesta.”

In April 1993, Aerostar International was awarded the bid on the balloon’s construction.

Shortly thereafter, an all-day meet-ing in a Phoenix hotel with an Aerostar engineer armed with a laptop computer led to “the Smokey Bear balloon being the first fully computerized balloon ever built,” Chappell said.

In May, Chappell traveled to Aerostar’s headquarters in Sioux Falls, S.D., with an artist to make modifica-tions to a papier maché mock-up.

In July, Chappell and the artist once again went to Sioux Falls to examine huge patterns that had been cut out and laid on the floor.

The moment they approved the pat-terns, a team of seamstresses began sewing it together.

“In September I went back to Sioux

Falls where we inflated it for the first time,” Chappell said. “It was perfect. They didn’t have to change a thing.”

Now it was time for the maiden voy-age.

“We took it out in a cornfield in Sioux Falls, and I flew it,” he said.

Aside from a minor modification, Smokey was ready for flight.

The original Smokey Bear balloon carried the Forest Service’s message for over 500 flight hours spanning 11 years.

The second edition will once against make its appearance at the St. Patrick’s Invitational Day Balloon Rallye, and the Forest Service couldn’t have a better messenger than Chappell, even though he retired shortly after the first Smokey took flight.

“You want to get me on a soap box, get me started on the renewable resourc-es, what the Forest Service is all about and why I so dearly love the outfit,” Chappell said. “It’s about cutting tim-ber, grazing beef, providing recreation, watershed and all of these things that forests do for the public.

“The key to it is I’m just a lucky part of it. There are 30 or 40 or 50 of us that make it happen. I couldn’t do it without all of them.”


Smokey: New hot air balloonfrom PAGE 10


BILL CHAPPELL pilots the Smokey Bear balloon at a previous St. Patrick’s Day Invitational Balloon Rallye. The first Smokey Bear balloon, which was the first fully computerized balloon manufactured in the United States, was destroyed when it struck a television tower.

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