“When I was 8,” Rich Gibson recalls, “I asked my mother if there was anything in the medicine cabinet that could blow up. She said, ‘Of course not!’ “Within 30 minutes, I proved she was wrong.” Now 60, the pilot, Vietnam vet and former air cargo entrepreneur is still blowing things up– and setting explosive records — as owner of Rockford-based Rich’s Incredible Pyro. Wife and business partner Dee joins Rich when she’s not teaching 1st grade. Last year, the Gibsons’ pyrotechnic team broke the Guinness World Record for the Longest Wall of Fire (3,200 feet) at the Dayton (Ohio) Air Show.
“It was spectacular, something I’ll never forget,” says Stuart Claxton, Guinness World Records researcher. “Rich is very focused throughout the whole process, a consummate professional. His whole team work in sync and know exactly what is going to happen and when.” (A competitor broke that record late last year, but Pyro reclaimed it in March at the Florida International Airshow in Punta Gorda.)
The Gibson team also captured the Art Scholl Showmanship Award last year from the International Council of Air Shows (ICAS). “Rich’s Incredible Pyro is the first pyrotechnics contractor to receive this honor,” says John Cudahy, president of ICAS.
Brandishing the firm’s motto, “Feel the Heat,” Gibson teams travel to air shows throughout the U.S., Australia, El Salvador, Mexico and Canada. Using a controlled mixture of dynamite, gasoline and other explosives, the Pyro crew creates special effects to simulate an attack on an airfield.
As Navy and Air Force planes fly overhead, they stage a bombing display that’s on the ground but seems to be coming from the sky. (“The crowds think the planes are actually dropping bombs,” Gibson says.)
After more than 20 years, not a single spectator or Pyro crew member has been injured.
“With Rich, safety is the number one goal,” says team member Greg McCoy, a stained glass artist in real life (the teams are all volunteer). “He has everything figured out — so if it doesn’t look like a safe shot, he won’t do it.”
Gibson’s pyrotechnics did not lose popularity after 9/11. “The patriotism theme has been very strong,” he says. “You know: support your military.”
And, of course, there’s another factor: “It’s my theory that there’s something in the human spirit — especially on the male side — that loves to see things blow up!”
A suburban Philadelphia native, Rich Gibson spent three years in the Army, including one in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne. “At one point, they decided to put me in military police,” says Rich, who quickly volunteered to go anywhere else. He wound up in explosives.
Back in Philadelphia, Gibson learned to fly, and a year later was ferrying TV traffic reporters around for a small company. He subsequently joined an East Coast company that flew automotive cargo for automotive companies, and was asked to launch a similar operation in Rockford, close to a Chrysler auto plant.
Perfect timing
In 1973, during the Arab oil embargo, Gibson’s financially stressed boss offered to sell him the one-plane business (a Beech 18).
“I was $30,000 in debt, which might as well have been $30 million,” recalls Rich. But 30 days later, truckers staged a wildcat strike in Chicago, and Chrysler needed his help with deliveries.
Gibson continued to build company sales over the next 30 years, but sold in 1999. “I loved flying, and still do,” he reflects, “but once you start hiring people, it takes on a different aspect.”
Meanwhile, Gibson had staged his first air show in 1981, a year after he met — and married — Dee while sky diving.
She was a college student, newly retired as an Army major who had been blasting rock in Honduras with the combat engineers.
A Texas group wanted to put on a show in Rockford using World War II planes, and Rich offered them a hangar and office space. “Rich and a bunch of the guys were sitting around a bar talking about how cool it would be if something on the ground would happen as the planes flew by,” recalls Dee, a fellow pilot.
“Between my aviation and explosives backgrounds, I thought of a procedure that wouldn’t endanger the airplanes or their pilots,” Rich explains. “Basically, you’re making a lot of noise with explosives, blowing up a lot of gasoline to make big fireballs.”
The Texas outfit liked it, then asked Rich to join them in other shows, while also persuading the U.S. military to provide the aircraft. Other air show sponsors were soon at his doorstep.
During summer months, Rich’s Incredible Pyro is booked nearly every weekend. Sometimes Rich and Dee (who also has a “blaster’s license”) head up different shows, but they prefer working together. Ironically, Dee got into Pyro “kicking and screaming. At first, Rich sent me off to buy different odds and ends — I had no idea what for,” says the 48-year-old teacher, who has a master’s degree in remedial reading. “Then we did the show, and I thought, `Wow!’ Since then, he’s taught me all the tricks of the trade.”
During a show, the military usually do a number of flybys, demonstrating capabilities of various aircraft. The Gibson teams make it look as if the planes are dropping bombs and making strafing runs.
`A lot of Hollywood’
“Typically, the strafing run we build — using plastic caps that have different length delays built into them — is between 700 and 800 feet long,” Rich says.
“That’s unrealistic, but we want to give everybody a good look. Again, there’s a lot of Hollywood in what we do.”
In three minutes, Pyro uses 600 to 800 gallons of gasoline, and a couple hundred pounds of explosives. Without wind, the biggest explosions can climb close to 300 feet.”
“The audience gets a chance to actually be a part of it. They really feel the heat. They smell the smoke,” says Dee, who occasionally heads an all-female explosions staff, which playfully calls itself the Pink Team.
They’ve had some interesting experiences getting through airport security, Rich concedes, smiling.
“On a chemical level, we’re just reeking with the smell of explosives.
“One time at O’Hare, all the lights and bells on their machines started going off, and this security agent gets on her radio and says, `That guy from Rockford is here again!'”
