Thanks to a little girl named Serena, two men-a former telephone company lineman and a former television repairman-have given nearly 3,000 disabled people the thrill of flight in a hot-air balloon.
Gary Waldman, from Correctionville, Iowa, and Phil Gray, from Indianola, Iowa, have designed and built the only Federal Aviation Authority-approved aircraft in history for disabled passengers: A hot air balloon named Serena’s Song.
The project was inspired by Waldman’s 12-year-old daughter, Serena, who has suffered from cerebral palsy since birth. The balloon took nearly eight years to complete, with an estimated pricetag of about $32,000.
“I was so blissfully ignorant of the roadblocks that face handicapped people until we were issued our first handicapped license plate. In a way, Serena’s Song tackles some of those roadblocks and the ignorance that creates them,” Waldman says.
Gray, an FAA-certified hot air balloon manufacturer since 1982, echoes Waldman. What began as a labor of compassion for Waldman and Serena became a personal cause celebre when his 27-year-old daughter was recently stricken with multiple sclerosis.
“It means a little more to me now than it did when we started,” he says.
Under the auspices of Waldman’s nonprofit corporation, Special Ballooning Adventures Inc., the men and their wives, Linda Gray and Cheryl Waldman, have spent summer weekends for the last three years visiting community festivals throughout the U.S., giving disabled kids and adults free hot air balloon rides.
The $2,500-a-day operating cost of Serena’s Song is underwritten by donations from local businesses. Waldman said additional costs are defrayed by donations from Bob and Beverly Lewis Thoroughbred Racing, owners of 3-year-old Kentucky Derby contender, Serena’s Song, which shares only its name with the balloon.
Lauren Dichter, 9, went for a balloon ride when Serena’s Song visited Lisle’s Eyes to the Skies festival over the July 4 weekend.
“She loved it. She enjoys all kinds of motion. Her experience will make her the star of her school,” said Lauren’s mom, Mary Dichter.
“I was a little apprehensive at first but I wanted Lauren to have the opportunity to know what it feels like to fly like a bird,” she said.
Dichter noted that Lauren, who, like Serena, is confined to a wheelchair by cerebral palsy, might never fly were it not for Serena’s Song.
Those who are wheelchair-bound and cannot leave their chairs may not fly. Thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act they can visit an airport, they can even use the washrooms but they can’t enter the airplanes.
According to former FAA employee Randy Gibson of Centerville, Iowa, “The fact is, any person who has gone aboard an aircraft in a wheelchair has done so as a matter of coincidence, not design.”
In 1989 Gibson was on temporary detail to the FAA’s regional public affairs office in Kansas City, Mo., when he learned about Serena’s Song. Moved by Waldman and Gray’s quest, he followed the story closely.
“Not one single aircraft has ever been designed with deliberate consideration for wheelchair access. Until now,” says Gibson.
He notes that Gray made aviation history when he built Serena’s Song. It was not an honor that Gray, one of eight FAA-certified balloon manufacturers in the world, would have chosen. When Waldman contacted him in 1984 with the idea for a handicapped-accessible balloon, Gray resisted.
“When Gary called, I didn’t want to do it. I asked him to call back in two weeks. Then I asked him to call back in three weeks, hoping he would get discouraged and call someone else,” Gray recalls.
What Gray didn’t know, according to Gibson, was that Waldman had exhausted his options. Armed with drawings of a wheelchair-accessible balloon gondola, Waldman had called every major balloon manufacturer he could find, “but got a rather cold reception,” Gibson says. “Some of them simply refused to consider the project while others wanted a prohibitive fee to build it.”
The drawings, said Gibson, were by a Carter Lake, Iowa man named Jerry Becquette, a retired FAA-certified airframe and power plant mechanic. At the time Becquette owned a vehicle-conversion business for the handicapped.
The basic design innovation of the new gondola, Gibson says, was the addition of a door permitting wheelchair entry.
Gondolas are three- or four-foot high baskets accessible only to those who can climb or be carried over the top, said Gibson. Waldman’s goal was to preserve the dignity of disabled individuals by allowing them easy access.
Gray was certain the design would not get FAA approval. He could build the gondola, he said. No problem. But Waldman had little money, funding balloon construction with donations.
“Gary is very persevering. Even though he was trying to do this on a shoestring, he persisted,” says Gray. His National Ballooning Ltd., known for exclusive, expensive, custom-built hot air balloons, would do the job.
Though Waldman’s fundraising efforts account for less than $10,000 of the balloon’s $32,000 construction costs, Serena’s Song became a reality.
“There really wasn’t enough money,” Gray insists. “But if we didn’t go ahead and do it anyway, we never would.”
Becquette helped secure FAA approval. An engineer in the FAA’s Lincoln, Neb., Flight Standards District Office, Bill Newby, liked the idea. But there were no parallels to it in the FAA record of aircraft certificates. Newby decided the project had enough merit for him to invent guidelines, says Gibson.
“In essence, Bill designed safety standards for an entirely new class of hot air balloon,” Gibson says.
Gray usually works with a safety factor of five, he says. That means balloons and gondolas built by National Ballooning usually are five times stronger than FAA specifications. For Serena’s Song, he upped that times three, to 15 times stronger than FAA standards.
“The door and the superstructure are made from the strongest aircraft aluminum available,” says Gray. The basket is made of traditional wicker, to keep the character of the hot air balloon experience as close to conventional as possible.
For wheelchair clamps Gray had to contact a firm that makes such brackets for French aircraft, where planes must provide handicapped space. The brackets are made in the U.S.
The balloon, 1,600 square yards of expensive Ripstop nylon, holds 105,000 cubic feet of air. Compared to the 65,000 to 75,000 cubic feet of air in a standard balloon, Serena’s Song is designed to safely carry, “a 250-pound man sitting in a 250-pound wheelchair, his family and the pilot,” says Waldman.
For Serena’s Song and her passengers the reality of flight still has its bounds, however.
Though she can soar up to 100 feet, the balloon must remain tethered to the ground.
“What we’ve done is take an inherently dangerous sport and make it accessible to the physically challenged.
“But the fact remains, it is still a dangerous sport, and we want Serena’s Song passengers to have only positive experiences,” Gray says.
“I am proud of the fact that I have crewed this balloon in dozens of flights, and we have never accepted any pay except for the smiles of our passengers.”
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For more information, contact Special Ballooning Adventures Inc., P.O. Box 282, Correctionville, Iowa 51016.
