"It was 1976 after one particularly muddy motorcycle race and the brothers and I were too filthy to go into the house. So, as we sat around in the yard, we discussed how we needed to get into a cleaner sport. Two weeks later my brothers Ted and Joey called to tell me I owed $3,000 as my share in our first balloon," says Gauthier.
It was a particularly opportunistic time to be entering the sport. In the next few years Gauthier would meet many individuals who are now old and valued friends, people like Don Piccard, Denny Floden, Pat Fogue, Bill Bussey, Bruce and Tucker Comstock, Tarp Head and the late Mike Adams.
"I was in the Atlanta airport and found Adams Balloon Loft in the phone book. I had never heard of Adams Balloons," Gauthier recently recalled for Balloon Life, "so I called up and Mike answered. ‘This is Guy Gauthier,’ I said, ‘and I think I’d like to buy a balloon, so if you want to sell one, come and get me."
The conversation was short and to the point, characteristically Guy Gauthier. Adams directed Gauthier to a nearby hotel and picked him up there. The two spent a weekend together forming a friendship that lasted the remainder of Adams’ life and beyond.
It was one day at Adams’ Balloon Loft, with his new balloon under construction, that Gauthier met Tom Gaebel and first learned of the Kool Pro Tour. It was while on the tour that he would meet Dr. Bill Bussey.
"He (Bussey) called and wanted to borrow a basket. Not knowing who he was, brother Ted and I had a discussion and concluded that since he was a doctor if he broke it he could afford to fix it." (Sure enough, Bussey broke the uprights off the basket on a tether that weekend!)
Those years on the Pro Tour instilled a love of competition in Gauthier, and while he has always wanted to win the national championship, his best finish has been 12th, and he knows why.
"I’m not as dedicated to competition as I need to be. I want to go out and play and party and socialize and play golf (at least 18 holes at every festival is his norm). Ballooning to me is a pleasurable thing and while I do want to be good at it, and I want to win the championship, I don’t want to win it bad enough to have the discipline that Steve Jones, Pat Cannon, Bruce Comstock, Joe Heartsill or any of the others who have won it have."
Gauthier flew the Kool Pro Tour while also operating a commercial contract with four balloons for Yoplait. When the contract played out, Gauthier bought his first Adams ride balloon, bought Chicagoland’s Windy City Balloonport, and spent his time flying rides and doing repairs. For the next few years he would summer in Chicago (operating the ride business), then winter in Atlanta working with Mike Adams. After Adams’ death from cancer, Gauthier bought Adams Balloons from the estate and became a manufacturer for the first time. He would sell Adams Balloons in 1989 and open his second repair station, The Balloon Loft. During all of these years in Atlanta, Gauthier met another key player in his future, Pat Fogue, for whom Gauthier has since served as a back-up pilot on his Pepsi contract.
The technical side of ballooning has always interested Gauthier who was employed as an engineer at a meat packing plant when first attracted to the sport. After two stints as a manufacturer, at Adams and with Thunder & Colt, and three more in repair stations, it should come as no surprise that Gauthier will soon debut a new "Gauthier Balloon."
"I don’t want to be one of the big balloon builders. I’m just building one right now, and if I can build an affordable balloon, that’s what I want to do" he says, "because ballooning has gotten beyond the reach of the average sportsman. Most of us who are in it now couldn’t afford to do it if we didn’t already own our equipment. And most of us can’t afford to go out and buy new gear; we’re going to have to go out and find used balloons and do repairs and rebuilds. That’s where I see the sport going and that’s why I’m in the repair and rebuild business."
At present Gauthier plans to build envelopes incorporating a few of his own "refinements", then STC a "system" that will likely specify other, already certified baskets and burners. But don’t expect a huge factory, a dealer network and all the other manufacturing overhead. "I want to build one-offs for my friends and beyond that, if you want to build something special, call me, I’ll be happy to discuss it with you."
Like so many of our sport’s earliest aeronauts, Gauthier learned most of what he
knows through the school of hard knocks. Now, some twenty years later, he is anxious
to help today’s newcomers find an easier road into the sport.
Career Notes:
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