British adventurer Peter Elstob’s planned trip from the Canary Islands to Barbados met with failure in 1958.īrown, a former Miss Lexington who was an actress in commercials and a regular on the daytime soap opera “Love is a Many Splendored Thing,” was eager to participate. The first, in 1873, saw the balloon travel just 45 miles. The most recent, in 1968, ended when two Canadians crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia. It would be the fifth attempt at an Atlantic balloon crossing since 1873. A classical pianist and amateur navigator who had learned to use a sextant, he had recently worked as director of admissions at New York University and enlisted the school’s leading meteorological expert to help plan the journey.
It was Anderson who became obsessed with the idea of the trans-Atlantic balloon trip, according to Henderson. Brown’s older brother had taken over Kentucky Fried Chicken six years before. Brown’s father, John Young Brown, was a powerful attorney and state legislator, who indulged his favorite daughter and helped finance the trip. When their money ran out, Brown turned to her successful Kentucky clan. “They called it feeding the monster in the backyard,” said Henderson. Film producer Alfred Crown seemed to offer a more realistic assessment of the event when he told Esquire, “They’re sure in a hurry to die, aren’t they?”īrown and Anderson were so sure of making history that they sold off their furniture and left their Upper East Side apartment to raise more than $100,000 for their grand adventure. We were part of history.”īut others were not so buoyant. “We punched each other in the arm,” recalled poet Rosita Benson as she watched the balloon glide across Gardiners Bay and Long Island Sound.
“There was not a cloud in the sky as this incredible eight-story balloon lifted off as if it was a ballet dancer.” Pamela Brown in red and American Rod Anderson being interviewed before the flight. “The launch was so perfect,” said filmmaker Genie Chipps Henderson, 78, a member of the ground crew who recently produced a commemorative film about the event for the East Hampton LTV network. There was a festive air as families lugging picnic baskets accompanied by excited children and dogs carved out their space on the grass - a scene the Easthampton Star described as “a beautiful, old-fashioned, surrealist pageant.” By the time the balloon lifted off in the early afternoon, more than 1,500 were gathered.
AMATEUR GAY MEN TWITTER MISSISSIPPI PROFESSIONAL
On the day of the launch - “a sparkling September Sunday” in 1970, noted Esquire magazine - the Springs fire department filled the balloon with gas from tanks stacked on trucks as the meadow filled with professional and amateur photographers eager to chronicle the historic take-off.
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A case of champagne for the celebratory landing in France five days later was stowed inside.īritish balloonist Malcolm Brighton, 32, signed on to pilot the giant 80-foot-tall orange and yellow Free Life just a month before the journey. A volunteer built shelves inside the balloon’s circular gondola, which measured 12 feet wide by four feet deep, and were lined with hundreds of ping pong balls for buoyancy. Local merchants donated meals and supplies, and one cafe owner housed the amateur aeronauts - actress Pamela Brown, 28, and her commodities-broker husband Rodney Anderson, 32 - for free.Ībercrombie & Fitch outfitted the crew with survival gear.
The crowds began to gather at dawn, although dozens of people had insisted upon camping out all night on a sprawling Hamptons meadow fearful of missing even a minute of the momentous event - the launch of the Free Life, the helium balloon poised to become the first ever to cross the Atlantic.įor four years, residents of the Springs hamlet in East Hampton, whose summer regulars included artist Willem de Kooning and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jean Stafford, had pitched in to help two unlikely adventurers prepare for the more than 3,000-mile journey. Giant floating head looms over parkgoers in bizarre video Video captures man dangling from hot air balloon before falling to his death Man films chaotic hot air balloon crash as they skid across desertįull of 'hot air': Man stands on top of balloon 13K feet up