On June 4, 1783 aviation began when Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier launched a flying machine inflated with smoke and hot air, which carried aloft a rooster, a sheep and a duck.  With the success of this flight, the King of France agreed that a successful human flight would be a crowning glory for France and sponsored the first human flight later that year.

After a balloon flight in 1908 Le Figaro remarked, “I have known today a magnificent intoxication. I have learnt how it feels to be a bird. I have flown. Yes I have flown. I am still astonished at it, still deeply moved.”

Our South Haven Team’s fifty-five year old patient cannot say exactly how, when, or why he became fascinated with hot air balloons.  He only knows that at some point in his life he was given a poster of hot air balloons that fostered a great enthusiasm for a sport he was never able to become involved in himself.  Suffering from kidney failure and under Hospice at Home’s care, as he shared of his life with our staff social worker he spoke of his fascination with hot air balloons and how he wished he could at least get close to one before he died.  His social worker brought the request to our Life is Precious Program.  Working through a contact at the Battle Creek Balloon Festival we were put in contact with a balloonist who lived about thirty miles from our patient.  When told by our staff of our patient’s story and request he explained that he didn’t have any launches planned but our patient could come and visit him in his shop and he would “talk shop” for as long as our patient desired.  He planned to introduce our patient to balloon maintenance, talk him through the launch sequence, flight controls, and landing.  Before ending the telephone call he said, “You know what?  Tell him I’ll launch a balloon from my front yard so he can watch a launch.”  Our patient’s story had touched his heart.

Just before the planned visit to his shop the balloonist called and said that he was taking two couples on a balloon flight and invited our patient to be present for the launch.  On the appointed day our patient, along with his care giver and social worker, was transported to the launch site by a wheelchair transport service.  He was able to meet with the balloonist, enjoy shop talk, and witness the launch.  His wish, so we all thought, was fulfilled and he was happy.  But the story doesn’t end there.

One of the couples on the flight, learning of our patient’s story, anonymously purchased a flight for our patient.  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing when he learned of the flight.  His flight, scrubbed once by weather, took place on a Thursday evening in late July.  The balloonist transported his balloon to our patient’s home town to make it easier on him.  On that evening, accompanied by several Hospice at Home staff members, including his care team from our South Haven office, he arrived at the local high school parking lot.  Unknown to any of us beforehand, the patient’s family was also there.  You could see the anticipation and joy in his face.  Seeing all the people that had come to be a part of this great event in his life caused him to realize that his life had touched so many others.  Once airborne the balloonist took him high enough that he could see Lake Michigan and then down into the tree tops where he could pluck a leaf from the top of a tree.  His flight lasted about an hour and then touched down in a nearby parking lot as there was little wind that evening so he didn’t travel far in distance.  When the chase team, friends, and family arrived at the landing site he was sitting in the balloon basket, grinning from ear to ear and wearing the leaf he had plucked in his shirt pocket much the way one wears a handkerchief in the pocket of a suit coat.  He really enjoyed his flight.

“When once you have tasted flight you will always walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward: for there you have been and there you will always be.”  ~  Henry Van Dyke