by Peter Stekel
Patty Anderson remembers 1978
very well. "It was a very busy and hectic and wild and exciting time,"
she says. "People thought of them (her husband Max, Ben Abruzzo, and
Larry Newman) as heroes," because the flight of Double Eagle II was
a feat that had been tried many times before but never accomplished. They
spent the better part of the year after the landing of Double Eagle II just
touring. "The men went to many conventions and meetings and spoke at
a number of events. That was just a culmination of a lot of planning and
a very exciting flight."
Of the flight itself, what stands out in her mind is flying to Europe on an airliner. Over the Atlantic, "We spoke to the men from the plane and one of the pilots could see the glow of the balloon. That was very exciting too." Twenty years later, Patty Anderson also says, "There were so many things about it, at the time, that were emotional and exciting. It's hard to remember them all."
In between the excitement there was plenty of time to be worried. The weather was a big concern as were radio problems but the greatest distress for the people on the ground was simply not knowing what was happening at any given time. "We were at the weather headquarters in Massachusetts, just outside of Boston," Patty Anderson recalls. "We could kind of follow their path but it wasn't like being right up to the minute. Quite often things happened long before we knew about them."
When Double Eagle I was foundering off the coast of Iceland, "We didn't know they were in that much trouble because we were flying from the US to London." They got in late and, "By the time we heard about it, we just got snatches of information. We didn't know if they were safe or not. We weren't sure what happened." Anderson pauses in her recital and then says, "They were lucky to have come through that one."
Sometimes they would discover what was going on, at the moment, but it offered slim consolation. When Double Eagle II was sinking rapidly and the crew had to jettison the hang glider, "We found out about that at the time and it was unnerving."
Unnerving also was when the radio failed. "It is very difficult when you don't know what is going on and you can only guess."
Patty Anderson is experienced enough to understand both sides of the issue, though. What the ground crew has to go though and what the flight crew is experiencing are quite different in any number of ways. After Double Eagle II, "I went on a gas balloon flight with Maxie and Don Ida out of Indianola, Iowa, during Nationals." Don Ida and Max Anderson would later be killed in a balloon accident in Germany.
"The three of us were in a gas balloon race and we ended up in a lake in Wisconsin. There was a horrendous thunderstorm. We were in clouds and rain and we couldn't see where we were going." Despite the dangerous situation, Anderson says, "It was extremely exciting."
They ended up in a lake. "There were whitecaps on the water. The envelope was like a spinnaker with the wind pulling us through the water like a sailboat. The basket was halfway under the water and we were sure we would end up having to swim to shore." She remembers asking Don Ida if he could swim, "Because I knew Max and I could."
Patty Anderson pauses the same way as when describing the perils of Double Eagle I. In a slow, draw-out voice she says, "He said `No. Well; maybe just a little.'"
At one point, Ida did fall back into the water and, "We had to pull him back in."
Anderson mentions this story to illustrate a point. "I've been in a situation where we very easily couldn't have made it. At that point we were almost completely out of helium." They hit a sandbar and, "We shot back up into the sky a hundred feet or so and then we dropped very rapidly." Fortunately, "The envelope snagged in a huge, dead, old tree as we were coming down and caught us. We ended up hanging a few feet off the ground, the basket swinging back and forth. I thought it was exciting but scary." She remembers thinking, "If my kids or my parents knew the problems we encountered they would have been very upset with me for being in that situation. But when you're on the ground, it's completely different than when you're involved in the excitement of a ride like that."
You needn't be crazy or have a death wish to find such experiences fun, exciting, or challenging. As for being the first to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon? It wasn't like that at all for Max Anderson, according to his wife. "He was always wanting to be challenged. He was a successful businessman, and he was at the point where he didn't have to work at it day to day. He just saw that challenge out there. He loved ballooning and he wanted to do it."
She continues to explain. "That's the kind of thing Max wouldn't think twice about. He wasn't a daredevil. He didn't do anything that he thought would be his demise. He wasn't trying to flirt with death. He accepted any challenge." Max Anderson prepared for them too. "He swam laps, pumped iron; he did everything to get his body in physical condition."
When it came to flying Double Eagle, Patty Anderson says she tried to talk Max out of it. "When I knew he was determined and he was going to do it, my alternative was to help him." So help she did. Patty handled press relations, helped with logistics; in short, she had a role in everything. Everything, except for the landing in France.
"That was the wive's biggest disappointment," she says. Because ABC was backing the flight, they had a plane and they had some helicopters standing by. "When it was learned the men were going to land a ways away, ABC was supposed to take us there in a helicopter." But the news crew sent their photographers, "and a little bit of everybody, I think, but not us."
Patty Anderson, Sandy Newman, and Pat Abruzzo weren't at the landing site. "By that time we were so emotionally upset that we were drained. That was the most emotional part of the entire flight; the relief of them landing but not being able to be there to be a part of it."
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Double Eagle II, Patty Anderson plans to celebrate the same way she has been doing for the last several years. "We have been working all these years for a balloon museum in Albuquerque." It's called the Anderson-Abruzzo International Balloon Museum. They've raised enough money for the shell of the museum and we are now working on getting the funding for displays and the additional types of things a museum needs. "We definitely expect to have it open in 2001," she says with a trace of pleasure. It will be a fitting memorial.
