Always a bridesmaid, never a bride is a tag often hung on second place finishers. The Dallas Cowboys, long before they were the team of the 90’s, were the team that couldn’t win the big one. Dale Earnheart has won seven NASCAR championships but still suffers from a self-imposed stigma of never winning Daytona-where he finished second again this year. But Bill Cunningham doesn’t see second place that way at all, as I learned when we recently visited at length over a leisurely breakfast along the banks of the Mississippi River.
"The way I see it," he explained, "is that there are 99 other pilots striving for the championship and all but one of them would gladly change places with me." When you come to understand that Bill Cunningham is not being slowly consumed from the inside by second place demons, you understand a lot about the man.
Cunningham hails from East Arkansas but is most comfortable in Memphis where he first moved to while a fourth grader following his father’s death. He returned there in 1994 where he is employed as a safety consultant to small trucking companies. In between he hoped from job to job after college until he discovered ballooning in 1978 launching himself into 13 years of full-time ballooning.
Cunningham and a business partner were about to open the first Quick- lube business in the southeast in 1978 when they got the idea that having a balloon at the grand opening would be a good idea. They sought out a local balloonist who worked at a Holiday Inn and was negotiating a balloon contract with the hotel chain. In a matter of weeks Cunningham and his partner went from oil barons to balloonists, having bought the original Holiday Inn balloon without an operating contract.
Making a living by selling rides and student instruction, the competition bug bit Cunningham early. He befriended Bill Bussey in 1979, participated in the KOOL Pro Tour and flew commercially for Mel Hanson on such contracts as 7Up, Bud, Red Lobster, and others. He attended his first Albuquerque Fiesta in 1979 and would win Fiesta his second time out in 1980 during an incredible championship run.
"There was an event before Albuquerque that I won, then I won Fiesta, went on to the first Plano (Texas) event the week after Fiesta and won it, got back home and won one more event. I won four straight events in a space of about six weeks. I just got on a hot streak; I guess I was just better than I had a right to be," he says.
It is a hot streak that has continued for over 13 years. Cunningham has twice won the North American Championship (in 1990 and 1994), has a top ten and a top five finish at two World Championships and a top five finish at a 3rd North American Championship, plus his string of seconds at the Nationals. However, it is the competition that drives Cunningham, not the winning.
"I like to compete," he says, "and I don’t care if its golf, ping pong or ballooning, I like the playing of the game, getting in that ‘zone’ and competing is a rush. My goal is to win; each competition flight my goal is a zero-zero (perfect) score and if first place comes with that, that’s fine. But I don’t have a burning desire down deep to be number one that’s going to eat at me, because I don’t define winning and my self-worth or value by the number of the place I finish in. At the Nationals the guy who finishes 99th and had to struggle and fight just to finish is as much a winner in my mind as the guy who finishes first."
Today Cunningham spends a lot of time serving as a Balloonmeister, notably at the annual Great Mississippi River Balloon Race in Natchez, Mississippi. "I accept the role of Balloonmeister because I want to give something back to ballooning," he says, adding quickly that he doesn’t feel he’s organized enough to do it well. Still he says he feels a spiritual need to give back to the sport. "God expects the most out of people he has given the most to," he explains. "I’ve been blessed with the talent to fly a balloon, so I think God expects me to do what I can to share that talent with others.
Looking to the future Cunningham hopes to stay as competitive a flyer as possible but says it is the people in the sport who ultimately mean the most to him.
"Really it’s the people in ballooning that keep me going," says Cunningham. "I love the relationships and friends I’ve made in the sport. If a National Championship happens one day, that’s fine, but if it doesn’t, that’s fine too. I know that I’ve done my best and that’s all anyone can ask of you."
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