Ballooning lost one its true gentleman
in February when Don Kersten, Fort Dodge, Iowa, pasted away at age 72. He
was one of the originals in our sporthis name found right alongside those
of Yost, Piccard, Pellegrino, Sonnichsen, Barnes and others. The following
tribute to Don is from an early article that appeared in Balloon Life.
He was a founding father of the Balloon Federation of America. He once fell asleep on the sofa of renowned French aeronaut Charles Dollfus. Then there was that incident with an Indianapolis outhouse back in '66... Meet Don Kersten, gentleman balloonist.
It was in 1965 when Kersten, already a near 20-year aviation veteran (he soloed fixed wing in 1948) who had flown fixed wing, gliders and done some sky-diving, first discovered ballooning. "I'd never seen one (balloon) but I read about this fellow [Don] Piccard who had built one. I called him up and I said, `OK, I'll buy it if you come to town and teach me to fly and get me a license.'" In July of 1965 Piccard went to Fort Dodge, Iowa "and after the third flight he got out and said `OK-you've got a commercial license.'"
The balloon Kersten purchased was a Piccard AX-6, serial number 6. "Serial numbers 5 & 6 were the first two manned balloons [Piccard] built," says Kersten, "he built them at the same time. One was the KNX balloon built for a radio station in LA and the other was mine. It was all white and its name was (and still is) Merope.
If three flights seems only nominal training, remember that Kersten had over 2,000 hours of other flying time. With his training completed in July, by September Kersten was en route to compete in his first National Championship in Reno, Nevada where he came in third. On the straight distance race he went to 15,000 feet altitude. Afterwards they put in a rule that you could fly no higher than 10,000 feet. Why? "We discovered there wasn't enough oxygen up there."
In those years, the late 1960's, Kersten was one of about a dozen active hot air balloonists in the U.S. Already there was something of a competitive circuit developing with annual trips to the St. Paul Winter Carnival in January; the Columbus, Ohio State Fair; and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
In 1967 Kersten was part of the group of balloonists along with Ed Yost and Peter Pellegrino that reorganized the Balloon Federation of America to include hot air balloonists. Next he helped reestablish a National Championship in 1970. (The "Nationals" had been held in `65 and `66 in Reno then were discontinued, partly because of a lack of funding.)
Nineteen pilots showed up for the 1970 Nationals but the Iowa fairgrounds launch field could only accommodate ten balloons. A preliminary barograph race was held in Indianola (where the pilots were housed at Simpson College for a grand fee of $1 per day!) to cut the field to ten competitors. Such was the beginning of a long association between ballooning and Indianola, Iowa.
Kersten served as the second President of the BFA (following Peter Pellegrino). "Communications was our main purpose back then" recalls Kersten, "so we felt our publications were of paramount importance. Indeed, that's where the idea of a sanction race fee beganwe used that to raise money for the treasury to pay for our publications.
"The BFA of those early years was also different in that we envisioned a loose organization of various balloon clubs, that's why we used the word Federation. I don't think we really thought of the BFA as a large group of individual members."
Through the years Kersten has had an opportunity to meet and fly with some of the other pioneers of our sport. Among those that stand out in his memory are Europeans Ernst Krauer of Switzerland and Frenchman Charles Dollfus.
"I remember at a meeting of the CIA the question came up `did we think man would ever cross the Atlantic by balloon?' With my great wisdom I replied, `Of course not,'" Kersten remembers, "Dollfus however said `Yes...possibly!.' He was quite a man!"
Kersten rode with Dollfus on his last balloon flight out of Castle Howard in York, England. On another occasion, when visiting the Dollfus' home Kersten fell asleep on the sofa after dinner. He called it one of his most embarrassing moments. The culpritjet lag. "It was 4:30 in the morning Iowa time!," he insists. Flying the Swiss Alps in a gas balloon with Krauer is one of Kersten's favorite memories. Another was when he, Yost and Pellegrino were reunited during the FAVIA convention in Philadelphia in 1993.
Kersten always remained a sport pilot over the years, never venturing into a commercial ballooning enterprise. Indeed he was quite proud of the fact that he "never charged anybody a nickel" for a balloon ride. But he quickly adds that as a competitor he never liked to carry passengers anyway, "It was enough to have to worry about me," he says, "I didn't want to have to worry about you!"
Kersten, in an interview two years ago, says he had no regrets on his distinguished ballooning career, "I just take things as they come", he says, "and never look back." Being the gentleman he is, Kersten closed the interview and with a thank you for not asking about the outhouse incident back in '66...
1948 - soloed first fixed wing airplane
1965 - July 24 first balloon flight, July 29 FAA balloon license
1965 - 3rd place - US Nationals
1967 - Founding Father of BFA
1969 - 71 & 75-77 President BFA
1970 - brought US Nationals to Indianola, Iowa
1971 - secured first World Hot Air Balloon Championship to be hosted by USA-held in Albuquerque, NM
