PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — The first successful hot-air balloon crossing of the Atlantic will be remembered Wednesday afternoon here.
Kim Smith of the Presque Isle Historical Society will talk about the 1978 accomplishment of Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman.
Many others had tried the feat and failed, and some died trying.
As Smith recalls, the Double Eagle Two was named that for a reason.
"The Double Eagle One, obviously, since there was a Double Eagle Two, attempted to do this trip in September of 1977," she says. "And, basically, what they were trying to do is commemorate the 50th anniversary of Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic."
Abruzzo and Anderson added Newman and launched again on August 11, 1978, from Presque Isle. Why Presque Isle?
"First of all, they were very adamant that they were going to lift off from the United States, and not from Canada," Smith says. "Secondly, weather reports indicated that the closer to Canada for liftoff, the better. And, I think that's one of the reasons why this flight was successful."
She says the crew got quite the send-off.
"If you realize today that our population is just under 10,000, on this day, August 11, 1978, there were over 8,000 people on the field to watch them lift off," Smith says. She has been in a hot-air balloon herself, but never as high as the Double Eagle Two got, before it suddenly descended.
"The concept of being five miles up is just a little too much for me," Smith says. "So, about five miles up, and in a very short period of time they dropped to about 3,000 feet. So, you can imagine that type of rapid drop, how scary that must have been. And, so they immediately started throwing things overboard to lighten the load. And later, they found out, once they made it to France, that one of the things they threw over were their passports. So, they had to go to the embassy in Paris, which is where Lindbergh ended up. And they drew straws to see who was going to sleep in the same bedroom. Larry Newman won that; he was the youngest of the three pilots. And also, when Lindbergh landed on the tarmac, a little girl came out onto the tarmac and presented him with a bouquet of flowers. And, when these gentlemen made it to France in 1978, that little girl was now a grown woman. And she met them on the steps of the embassy, and gave them flowers."
The Double Eagle Two flight held the record for the longest hot-air balloon flight until earlier this year, when it was finally eclipsed.
There's more to this story, and Kim Smith of the Presque Isle Historical Society will be talking about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in the conference rooms of the Aroostook Medical Center in Presque Isle. The program is free.
