Downloaded from YTS.MX
[AIR HISSING]
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-[INDISTINCT CHATTER] -[DISTANT OWL HOOTING]
Okay, this determines if we pull out or not.
You can make that work.
-But stay below the tree line. -It's not in a hurry.
Seen it go much faster.
Okay, go ahead.
CHANTAL: From the year I was born, I was flying.
I don't remember my first steps
or the first words that came out of my mouth,
but I do remember looking through a tiny peep hole
of a large wicker basket with the entire world beneath my feet.
BILL COSTEN: If you had told me when I was a little boy
that I would be a hot-air balloon pilot,
I would've thought you were crazy.
CHANTAL: As a pilot's kid, I've learned so many lessons,
and each one has profoundly shaped my life.
JARRELL COSTEN: You have to have ice in your veins.
You have to be fearless.
You have to trust your instincts.
You have to think quickly on your feet.
Make things up as you go,
because literally the wind is changing
every second you're up there.
You want to bend your knees a little bit.
WOMAN: Okay.
-Might hit a little hard. -MAN: Now come up and kiss the basket.
MAN 2: Why would anyone want to get in that little basket,
and put a balloon on the top of it and go up in the air?
I don't like big commercial planes,
and I'm gonna get in a little four-foot basket
and go up in the air. No, that's a no no.
Bye!
CHANTAL: My dad has always seemed to be
searching for something
and what he was searching for,
he found in the sky.
WOMAN: If you look around at the other balloons and the crews,
you don't see people of color.
I told Bill, the only color that mattered to me was green.
[LAUGHING]
And we laughed. Big hug.
And that's true. I feel that way today.
We came down like we were parachuting.
MAN: We hit the ground, we dragged 15 or 20 yards
and my heart's pumping. I just loved this.
I thought that's the way it was supposed to run
until my friend Keith came across the field and said,
"Everybody okay? That was quite a crash."
I mean, crash? If that's a crash, I'll do this again.
-We arrived alive. -ALL: Alive!
There's no reason I should be sitting here today in a balloon.
WOMAN 1: This is the reason. WOMAN 2: That's right.
WOMAN 1: Because all of these other friendships
would not have happened.
This became the nucleus,
one that just spread.
And that was God's plan in terms of spreading the friendship
-and the connection of camaraderie. -MAN: Right.
JARRELL: My first flight was when I was nine days old.
Um, I was literally out of the hospital,
nine days later, in a balloon basket and flying.
Being up in the sky, and it's nothing but you
a basket and an envelope,
to me, that's the definition of freedom.
Yeah, we're right on time.
We gotta go pick up Al and Bev. [CLEARS THROAT]
Tony and Laura, they probably will be leaving
about five or six o'clock.
Which type of places, which state park...
Heard a couple of people talking about
how beautiful it was to fly in the gorge.
The gorge is actually the Grand Canyon on the East Coast.
So the object of flying up there
is taking off from the little park,
flying right across the street,
and then dropping 900 feet down into the gorge,
right by the river, way down below.
JARRELL: Are there festivities up there at the race?
Not really. This is more of a private party.
We got about 30 balloons coming.
And we just get together and fun fly.
I've been flying with Bill for about 28 years.
Every weekend, we'd be coming home
and we'd see a balloon in the distance
and we'd try to be there when it landed,
and most of the time we did.
Most of the time it was Bill.
And then we asked him if we could help, and he said, "Sure."
So, we helped him one time.
And then a couple of days later, we saw him land again.
So we helped him again.
Okay, let's see what we got.
Oh, let's just through...
-Oh my... -Oh, my God.
-Sure you don't want us to take our car? -No.
One day he just turned to us and said,
"Wouldn't you like to be on the crew?"
And we didn't know what to do and he says,
"Do exactly what you're doing now."
BILL: Good morning. Balloon 91517.
I'd like to get a weather briefing in the Bradley area
between now and 10 o'clock
and he winds at 3,000 and 6,000 feet.
KEITH HERBERT: Let's see, we've been flying with Bill,
um, I stopped counting... just like birthdays.
I want to say 30 years.
I'm one of his oldest crew members.
When you find a good family
and good team and good people,
you stick with it.
I was selfish, naturally.
Finding a balloon team,
when it became a mission
and I looked over and said,
"Huh, here's an all-female crew with Bill."
This seems like a good crew to be with.
I think I'll start with this one, and I never left.
ALFRED: Bill is one of a kind.
When we met him, I mean,
he's 6' 6" or 6' 3", whatever it is,
and I'm 5 feet
and he wraps his big arms around me
and gives me a hug and that's it.
You know, it sets it all off.
And Bill's always been good to us.
We're part of the family, I believe.
KEITH: Lot of traveling, lot of races.
It was a great wholesome family experience.
And it started off selfish.
It was all about me at the time,
but then it grew into a family
and here was a great thing to take your kids
and build family experiences
and family ties and really good...
Build a lot of memories,
and it makes your relationship with our children
all the better in the long run,
now that they're adults.
I have been crewing with Bill for 13 years now.
Tony's mom, Jean Russotto,
was one of Bill's original crew members.
Tony was about 10 years old at that time
and came out with her
to some festivals.
And so he had his first flight
way back when with Bill.
[BURNERS HISSING]
-[WHOOPING] -WOMAN: Oh, my God!
[WOMEN SQUEALING]
MAN: You are lighter than air.
One thing our crew will do is when you take off,
they just follow the major roads
in the path of which you're going.
So once you land, you're able to pack up
and drive back to the original starting point.
ALFRED: He's got more speed than I thought.
He's starting to pick up a tiny bit.
The flow is starting in the valley a tiny bit.
Got a little more air movement.
Um, because, normally, he always beats me here
to do all that driving we just did.
BEVERLY: Look at him go.
Yeah, he, um, he stayed on the deck
and milked it for everything he'd get,
to keep from flying out of the area.
I can look at a balloon from the ground
and know exactly what the pilot is doing in the air.
So I'm very, very good at chasing a balloon down.
And just by a glance, just by the pattern of the burns,
and how fast is he burning,
how long is he burning,
it will tell me if he's climbing,
he's falling, and I know the terrain so well.
I know downwind, where he sees
and what he's trying to find.
So, you know, that was part of the challenge too,
was chasing. It's pretty interesting to chase down a balloon
and be there before it lands.
I get to go play in the morning
when nobody else in my house is interested
in getting out of bed.
So you go and have a great time
and to be wherever you wanna be,
most of the year, by 7:30 in the morning,
working back and cooking breakfast,
whatever needs to be done.
I'm a teacher and people that I work with think I'm nuts
to get up at four o'clock in the morning
on my days off to come out and do this,
and my response to them always is,
"I get to see the sunrise.
"We meet new people all the time,
"who are many times out for their first flight,
"and we always have a lot of fun together.
"And it's an adventure every time."
-Okay, get in here. -Okay, wait on the basket.
I've been flying with Bill since about 1986, I believe.
My first flight was with a cousin of mine
who wanted to go for a balloon ride.
And I found a way to get a hold of him.
And been doing it ever since.
I like being up high, looking down on things,
and this is a great way to do it.
You have time to focus on things.
On a plane, you're passing over real quick,
and you don't get to really see what's down there.
Which in a balloon you can do,
and you don't have the frosty window between you
and the outside as well.
Are we out of the way of the golfers?
LAURA: When I started crewing with Bill 13 years ago,
he could be calling me seven days a week.
And there were some times that that had happened
and I loved every minute of it.
Hold up at the top.
One leg all the way over.
All the way over. Sit down.
Slide off.
Okay. I need you to grab this rope.
LAURA: There are many of us that are loyal
and have devoted a lot of time and effort
and we do it because we enjoy it.
-WOMAN: It really wasn't scary. -[OVERLAPPING CHATTER]
It was very quiet, very peaceful.
We were up there saying this is what heaven must be like.
Everything I've tried in my life
was something less done by the masses.
And that truly has made the difference in my life.
Being an entrepreneur is probably
the greatest thing you can do,
because you're doing your passion.
I've always said, "Find something you love,
"go in head over heels and make it work."
[CHURCH CHOIR SINGING]
BILL: The dynamic in my family when I was growing up
was a very close, lovable family.
I really respected my father.
He was the pillar of our family totally.
[CHOIR SINGING]
BILL: My mother was very strong. She was very lovable.
WILLIAM: Omaha, Nebraska, is where I was born.
And this is when I'd met my girlfriend and we got married.
I met Dolores on 24th Street.
I said, "Ooh, boy, look at this beautiful girl here."
And I got interested.
And we made conversation
and it went on from there.
She was everything.
Uh, when you say she swept me off my feet,
and, uh, I don't know,
we just struck it off right at get go.
And we had our first son, Billy.
That was a big delight.
Then came Carmen, another big delight.
Then came Stephen,
and then Little Bud in the rain.
This is where we used to live.
41-11, and boy, is it over here.
Still got that chicken wire up.
-For the pheasant. -Yeah.
[CHUCKLING]
BILL: We stayed in the first house that I lived in
until about sixth, seventh grade.
It was a little, quiet neighborhood.
A lot of people over the years have asked me,
you know, "Are there any Blacks in Omaha?"
and actually, there were a lot of Blacks in Omaha.
Uh, I went to an all-Black school up until high school.
Quiet town, didn't have to lock your doors.
You could go anywhere you wanted to
and leave your door open,
your windows open.
At nights, it would get so hot.
A lot of the time we walked down to Carter Lake.
And we'd see a million other families
down there at Carter Lake.
All the families in the neighborhood
took care of the other families.
If you did anything wrong, you'd got whippings
based on one of the neighbors telling on you.
We were all strict on each other,
I believed in
if they were doing something, you take care of them.
And don't say, "Wait till your daddy gets home."
You take care of them then.
If I see him, I'm going to take care of him automatically.
And that's the way we managed things.
CARMEN MILLER: My mother, she used to work at the phone company
and she got sick during the middle of the week.
She had to go to the hospital,
and I remember they got us a rabbit.
We had a rabbit that day,
and we all piled in a car
because we was gonna go to Aunt Shirley's house
because Daddy had to take her to the hospital.
And we was all in the car,
and Stevie, Lorraine, Billy, me, was sitting in the back seat
and she turned around and she kept staring at us.
She just kept staring at us. And I kept saying,
"Why is she staring at us like that?"
I said, "Why is she staring at us like that?"
I think she knew that was gonna be the last time
she would see us.
Shirley took us back home.
So I went upstairs waiting for her to come home
because I just thought she was coming home
and I waited and I waited and then all of a sudden,
Daddy came home and he had Mama's coat.
And I said, "What's he doing with Mama's coat?
"I don't see Mama."
And Daddy came upstairs and he says,
"Carmen, you gotta be a big girl now,
"because, um, you're gonna have to take over everything
"and everything," he said, "Because your mother,
"your mother's passed away," or whatever.
And I started boo-hooing, boo-hooing
I was seven going on eight.
Lorraine was about two.
She was one going on two.
I think Stevie was about three.
So that makes Billy about...
I guess he was about nine going on 10.
BILL: I don't remember anything with my mom.
That's strange. I can't explain it or anything.
When my mom died, I took it very, very, very hard.
I think somehow I lost memory of her.
'Cause I can't even remember sitting on her lap or homework.
I don't remember anything about my mom.
There was a period of time after that in school,
I always used to look up in the clouds
and visualize, you know,
that my mom was up there with God.
And I was just telling a guy,
I said, "See those clouds up there?"
I said, "I can go up higher
"than those clouds tomorrow morning if I want,
"I can just go up in the sky, fly like a bird."
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
Hey, Gary. How are you?
Hey, Bill. Good to see you, man.
[CHATTER CONTINUES]
Brought my boots.
Okay, it's one step in the right direction.
-Kneepads? -Kneepads, yeah.
Kneepads, helmets.
Weather does not look good for the weekend.
Um... I think we got a shot tomorrow night.
[CLEARS THROAT] We got a shot for Sunday,
but it's kind of iffy all the way around
and it's the kind of stuff that you probably won't know
until a couple of hours beforehand.
Um, right now, there's a front that's going all the way
from the Panhandle of Florida
all the way up to Caribou, Maine.
Bill, as a pilot, I think he's been flying 35 almost 40 years now.
And I have never had a problem flying with him.
When he says it's too windy to fly,
his judgment is always right.
-How you doing? -What's the scoop?
-Rain. -No go?
Probably not.
Maybe one or two might take off.
Most of them won't.
Unless it clears up real quick.
-Radar don't look good? -Uh-huh.
Getting depressing. I don't know about you guys, but...
[LAUGHING]
WOMAN: We came from Connecticut.
-How depressed could that be? -Oh, yeah!
BILL: Over the years, going to different balloon festivals,
everything is based on weather.
Usually, we have four opportunities to fly,
usually four or five.
Usually it's Friday night, Saturday morning,
Saturday night, Sunday morning.
So out of the four chances that we get,
we're always hopeful that we can get all four in.
But we knew the Friday of Letchworth,
we knew that the weather was gonna be iffy the whole week.
You still see that high ball, sir?
They went down over on the other side of the trees.
MAN: High ball. Just a little party balloon,
filled with a little helium.
Release it, and as it goes up,
you'll see it do different things.
If it's less erratic, and if it's a good direction,
then you make decision to fly.
ALFRED: We'll sit on the ground and watch other pilots fly.
He's always very cautious and safe.
So when he says it's my turn to fly,
I jump at the chance because I know I'm in good hands.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
He's looking after the safety of his passengers.
The 28 years that I've been flying with him,
we've always, always had a safe landing.
Some landings were a little bit riskier than others,
but we always had a safely landing.
And everybody walked away.
So how did that kid do in the chair that went out?
-You don't know? -We don't know yet.
-We had some night shots. -I saw him when he came back up
and that's it. I ain't seen him.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
He'll be a hero. We'll see it on the news.
-Did you get any footage of him? -No.
You know, I was running my mouth and forgot.
-So I went over there... -Stand up landing.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
But he was handicapped already, I believe, ain't he?
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]
Doing what he doing now, right?
-No? -ALFRED: Kind of.
He was in Albuquerque.
Him and another pilot were flying.
And wind picked up and they went into power lines
and it cut the balloon right from the basket,
right from the balloon and came down, the other pilot got killed,
and he broke almost every bone in his body.
That's why he's handicapped.
-Oh, he haven't gave it up though. -No.
He cheated it once.
You never know where you're gonna go, what you're gonna do.
We've come out to the field
and it will be a little windy and so we can't fly.
Uh, the next time we'll look at it,
and if it's not windy, and we will fly.
And then, once you get in the air,
it's a little bit windier than you thought.
I have seen many miracles
while I was flying in the balloon,
and that's nothing but God.
I know some pilots think it's their ability,
but that is totally God.
And if I'm landing fast, I just ski, literally.
I would not recommend somebody
with this real small and frail bones
to land that in a fast landing.
-WOMAN: Mm-hmm. -I wouldn't... I just wouldn't fly,
but I've landed at 22 miles an hour.
WOMAN: Okay. [LAUGHING] MAN: It's fun.
It's fun.
-WOMAN: Yeah. -How was your flight?
Landed at two and a half miles an hour.
-Way past... -How far did you end up going?
9.7 miles, I landed way up at 408 Ridge Road.
BILL: There's a saying in ballooning.
"There are old pilots, there are bold pilots,
"but there are no old, bold pilots."
I've had my share of crash landings,
windy landings, rainy landings.
Over 36 years, I have seen it all.
So I don't take any chances.
My life in Omaha, Nebraska, when I was young
consisted of my house, church, school,
and my grandmother's house.
And that was a radius of about eight or nine blocks.
This is Hope Lutheran Church.
This is the church that I grew up in.
And we had a school not too far from here.
It was called Hope Lutheran School.
The school had two rooms.
One classroom was kindergarten to third.
The other classroom was four through eight,
and then all the students actually went to this church.
My life at that age was my family.
You know, my cousins, we were really tight.
We were totally outdoors.
We'd leave the house at eight o'clock in the morning
and get back before it got dark.
And we were just playing all day,
running, riding our bicycles
and playing sports, baseball, basketball, football.
The front door of our house was about right here.
We had a huge lot on this side that had a lot of fruit trees,
apple trees, pear trees.
Then on this side of the house was a lot
that we used to play football in and baseball in,
and it turned out, my father said that
the guy who lived right next door
when he was a little boy,
um, he saw my grandfather
walking on that lot and said, "You can't walk on there.
"That's private property."
And my grandfather, he used to be
a private car porter on the Union Pacific Railroad.
My father said he went right down to City Hall
and bought that lot,
and the guy was so mad that he moved out,
once he found out that my grandfather bought that lot.
WILLIAM: You know, when you're away working during the day
and then when they come home from school,
my mother used to take care of them,
and then later on, I remarried.
That was five years later.
And, uh, I think
they all became successful
with their new mother.
BILL: When I was young,
I never wanted my father to remarry
because I didn't think anybody could replace my mother.
And I was always shocked at the fact that here's a woman,
I mean, she was really classy.
That's one thing about my stepmother.
She was a classy lady you ever want to see.
Intelligent, I mean, well-read, just...
I mean, she was a wonderful, wonderful lady.
There's no other woman
that could have replaced my mother like she did.
And my father has said so many times,
he said, "You know, I was very lucky.
"I had two good women.
JOHN BEASLEY: She was my third grade teacher
and she was a tough disciplinarian.
I remember getting paddled
on several occasions during that time,
but she was a wonderful teacher
and very much dedicated in her job also,
and she expected nothing less than your best,
and so you tried to give that to her.
CALVIN WEBSTER: Growing up as kids, we always looked up to Billy
because he was the oldest one, and big.
So he was like our big brother.
When they choose a baseball team
or something like that, he was the first person taken,
because he'd always hit home runs and stuff, you know.
When he got in the Scouts, you know,
he did everything right
and was the best one at it
because nobody was in Eagle Scouts,
especially a Black person
You know, I don't remember
anybody being an Eagle Scout besides him.
Once he got into something, and put his mind to it,
he would usually be the best at it.
BILL: This is Central High School where I graduated
and back in my junior and senior year,
I used to play football here.
It was just no fun doing all that practice and hard work
and then never getting into the game.
Coach never put me into the game.
I remember my father came to see me,
once, to play, because he used to work nights.
So this one time, he came to see me.
The Coach put me in the game
with one minute left on the clock.
I think my total playing time
in my junior and senior year at Central High School
was about two minutes.
So Central High football and me didn't get along at all.
[BAGPIPES PLAYING]
[IMPERCEPTIBLE CHATTER]
The Montgolfier brothers invented hot-air ballooning,
which is different than gas ballooning, helium or hydrogen.
But they invented hot-air ballooning...
[BURNERS HISSING]
... in the Champagne Valley in France in the 1780's.
On they were paper manufacturers.
And the first hot-air balloons were predominantly made out of paper
and women silk undergarments,
that would fly off, cool down and then crash
in the vineyards in the Champagne Valley.
And the farmers would see these strange things
landing in their vineyards.
This is all very true.
And they would attack the balloons
with their pitchforks and their sickles.
They'd destroy the balloons.
So they started tying a bottle of champagne to the balloon.
And they go through the process
and the balloon would fly off, crashing in the vineyards.
And the farmers would come up... [GRUNTS ANGRILY]
And they'd see the champagne
and they would leave the balloon alone
and they would just lay down in the fields and get drunk.
[LAUGHTER]
BILL: I've been coming to the New Jersey Balloon Festival
for about 20 years.
It's probably the biggest festival
of the East Coast in terms of
how many people come versus
how many balloons are actually there.
We inflated the balloon for the first time,
right at the Atlanta Stadium.
The very next day was the race.
So, we, you know, got all the kinks out of the balloon and everything.
And then the very next day,
right when we were ready to take off,
you could just see the rain clouds coming in.
And Bob said, "Hurry, we've got to get this
"race off the ground," because you know the sponsors,
you know, it's always sponsor pressure.
So, uh, and then,
I was a private pilot,
so I couldn't take people up for hire.
So my first 50 hours
was pretty much flying solo by myself.
So I took off in the, uh...
raise and the clouds just came right upon us.
It started pouring down rain.
Here I'm flying over the tall Georgia pines,
a low ceiling.
The ceiling was all the way down to the pines.
So, the whole flight, I'm in the clouds.
I couldn't come down because of the tall pines.
All the rain was coming right down the center of the balloon.
It was like a waterfall right on me,
in the actual balloon.
Couldn't find no landing spot.
It was foggy. Couldn't see nothing.
I said, "I'm about to die today."
Kept flying, kept flying.
I had been flying about an hour and a half until I looked out
and I saw this big, huge field.
I said, "Thank you, Lord,"
and I just headed right for the field.
Soon as I hit the field, I went in
maybe this much mud
and I was just happy to be on the ground.
I just sat there
and this was out in rural Georgia in 1979.
So I said, "Well, the Klan is about to capture me.
[ALL LAUGHING]
There was one house right across the street.
Door open and out came running
six white men running toward me.
I'm in a field.
There were horses back in the field.
There's horse manure everywhere.
Mud water. And here comes six white guys after me.
-They got up... -[WOMAN SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY]
[ALL LAUGHING]
They got right up to the balloon.
"Can we help you?" I said,
-"Uh, uh-huh." -[ALL LAUGHING]
I went to the University of Nebraska
to become an architect.
But during 1965,
every freshman has to take the required courses.
And I remember there were two courses.
One was called Linguistics,
and another course was called Rhetoric.
Now, who wants to take Linguistics and Rhetoric?
I hated those two courses.
One day, I ran into a guy and he says,
"You know how to play poker?" I said, "No."
So he taught me how to play poker,
and we were playing poker for pennies and nickels and dimes,
and I learned the game real quick, and I started winning money.
My first semester, I ended up with a 1.3 average
because I chose poker over studying.
And the second, um...
The second semester, I did a little worse,
and I only got a 0.7 average
for a total cumulative average of 1.0
at the University of Nebraska,
all because I like to play poker.
I had to go see my counselor,
and he sat in front of me and said,
"Son, you are not college material."
I went home. I was dejected.
I knew I had to tell my father that
I wasn't gonna be able to go back to University of Nebraska
and that was a hard thing to do,
and he was disappointed, and, uh...
At the time, I had gotten a job
on the Union Pacific Railroad.
I had made a few trips and the money was good
and I had made a decision then,
I was gonna work full time on the railroad.
But my father didn't want me to do that,
and he told my uncle what happened,
and my uncle definitely didn't want me to drop out of college.
He said, "Look, um, if I can get you into college,
"will you... Will you promise me that you will do everything
"different and get your grades up?"
I said "Okay," because I really respected my Uncle Jim,
and, uh, he pulled some strings
to get me into Morris Brown College.
And it turned out I got four As and one B-plus,
and I was really mad at the teacher that gave me a B-plus.
But, you know, I accepted the honor roll.
My freshman year, I lived with my uncle and aunt
and my three cousins...
When Jim came in and said,
"Billy is going to come to Atlanta"
"and he's gonna live with us until he finishes college,"
it was not a question.
It was an affirmation.
Billy is coming. I said, "Wow, that should be fun."
Somebody asked, "How long is he gonna be here?"
I said, "Until he finishes."
Because that's the way southern African American people do.
They come to a place they will stay until they are ready to leave.
CHERYL COSTEN HIBBLER: I was seven years old
when Mr. Bill came to Atlanta.
All I'd know is there was a cool cousin
coming from Omaha, Nebraska.
He was like a big brother.
And plus, he was coming from Omaha, Nebraska. My cousin.
JAMES COSTEN: Bill was not easy to roll off our tongue.
Billy didn't seem appropriate.
And we always had to ask him for stuff.
So he was Mr. Bill.
CHERYL: It didn't matter what time Mr. Bill came in.
It was, "Mr. Bill. Mr. Bill, take me to the store, Mr. Bill."
"Mr. Bill... Oh, my little cousin," you know...
"Take your little cousin store, Mr. Bill," and he would...
He would be so calm. He's so cool.
My cousin was so cool. He was like...
-Okay... -"Okay,
"go out into the car and wait for me.
"I'll be out there shortly,"
and I'd just go watch TV or whatever.
"Okay, Mr. Bill." And knowing the day before,
he told me the same thing, but we never got to the store.
But every day was just as exciting as...
as if he... I knew he was coming.
BILL: When I first came to Morris Brown,
I was ineligible to play football,
but I wasn't gonna play anyway, because I never played
at University of Nebraska,
and I sat on a bench two years in high school.
So I didn't think I was any good at football.
And my roommate said,
you know, I was weighing about 275 pounds
and he said, "You're too big not to play football."
He said, "Get your behind on the football team."
So I tried out for the football team that year
and I earned a scholarship
and it turned out that I was pretty good on the team.
I was usually a defensive tackle or defensive end,
and I became pretty good. I made all conference,
CRAIG COSTEN: Bill had a real strange, stiff run.
So when he was playing football,he was Josse Smith, and...
And although the college that they played...
I could always pick my cousin out
because he had that...
that proud run off to the football field.
Way back when we used to sit on this wall,
we used to wait for the freshman women
to come driving up with their father and mother,
and all the football players used to sit up here and, uh,
pick out the new freshmen that they wanted to date.
It was always funny because some of the girls
would come in with their boyfriends,
and some of the football players would say, uh,
"Get your kisses now, because she's mine
"from this day forward.
So, this...
[ALL LAUGHING]
JERRI MONROE: I met Bill when we were both students at Morris Brown College,
And, um, he was
at a party and I was there with my friends Marlene and Judy,
and we kind of clicked instantly
and we became very close friends.
[EXCLAIMS]
[LAUGHING]
Bill was very much of an academic person, athletic person.
He loved to have fun.
You remember all the parties on the water, Monroe?
-Oh, yes. Every week... -BILL: It was... I think his name was Jim.
Yes, I remember that.
As a matter of fact, it was always...
Everybody was like, just... Bill's having a party.
[LAUGHS]
JERRI: He's, um...
mannerable, he's respectful, he has integrity, you know.
But he has just this wide open way of looking at, like,
you know, how a child has a way of
seeing the beauty in life and humor and...
He still has maintained that.
You remember Mrs. Ramsey? She was a librarian.
And she lived right next door to Jim.
JERRI: Yes.
Every time we had a party over there...
[LAUGHS]
She said, "Talk to Costen."
Uh, "Do you realize
"there are a whole lot of cars in front of your house
"while you were in South Carolina?"
[LAUGHING]
We used to have 50, 75 people in my uncle's house.
JERRI: Oh, yeah.
-Reverend Costen's house. -Yes.
[BILL SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY]
Yes, it was... It was just, like, a lot of fun.
Drink and dance.
JERRI: And... And then...
No... No drugs.
No drugs that we knew about.
We're talking the '60s. I never saw any drugs, ever.
JERRI: Mm-hmm. And... And...
[BILL SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY]
Oh, my goodness! What have I been missing?
[ALL LAUGHING]
And... And before... When everything was over,
it was just, like, make sure everything's put back in place.
It was just like nobody, you know,
had a party or anything in the house,
but it was always...
They're gone!
[LAUGHS]
MELVA: It dawns on me that
when little Bill came to Atlanta,
we were in the midst of the civil rights movement.
In fact, my husband had been
one of the leaders in North Carolina,
and when he was offered the job to Atlanta,
he was excited about coming, because
he would be able to spend
much more time with Martin Luther King Jr.
So here we sat with Martin, many an evening,
and, you know, all of us were just in awe
of being in his presence.
But he was so, so down to earth.
BILL: I remember, I was standing on this bridge in 1968
watching Martin Luther King's funeral procession
coming down Hunter Street.
And I remember running down that walkway,
and I jumped in the funeral procession
right behind the casket
and I had my father's video camera.
And we walked all the way down and turned left
and went over to Morehouse College.
COMMENTATOR: On the stop, number 21.
Good for 23 yards. Time out.
BILL: I felt, out of all the guys that I came up against,
there wasn't a single guy that I couldn't handle one on one,
mainly because of my strength that I was pretty quick.
A scout came up to me and he said he was from the Dallas Cowboys
and he was interested in me.
I was like, "What?" You know, I was shocked.
You know, shocked. I was totally shocked
that a pro scout was interested in me
after the background that I had in football.
So I started getting confident.
You know, I had four or five different teams coming up,
giving me aptitude tests, timing me in the 40-yard dash,
watching me play the game,
and they were promising me a high draft pick.
My senior year was coming up,
and we had a scrimmage game
right before the regular season started.
In the scrimmage game,
I ended up breaking my left wrist.
I was scared at that time, because I had had so many scouts
looking at me,
and I didn't wanna jeopardize me
not getting drafted by the professional teams.
I said, "Okay, I'm not gonna tell anybody."
So, each game, I used to wrap my wrist real tight.
I really worked on my strength.
So I had a lot of strength in my right arm
and I had strength in my left arm,
I just had to keep my wrist straight.
JAMES: I think he had hurt his arm in training or in practice or something,
and I jumped on his chest and I grabbed his fingers and I
started wiggling them like this
and he just laid there and he said,
"I'm gonna throw you across the room when I count to three.
Agh! He said, "One...
"two, three! And I go across the room.
But what's amazing about that is that...
It's as if I wasn't hurting his hand.
His hand was broken.
And that was my image of Mr. Bill, just invincible.
Just, you know, a real big guy,
didn't have a lot of fat on him.
He was very strong.
BILL: So I got drafted by the Buffalo Bills
and, you know, I was really happy
and all my friends were, you know, running around.
"Oh, he's going to the pros!" and, you know.
George, who was going to the Miami Dolphins.
You know, we were all excited,
and over the next few days, you know, on campus,
you know, a lot of people were, you know, happy for us that...
Uh... You know, guys from Morris Brown were going to the pros.
And, you know, it was just a fun time.
CRAIG: When Billy first was going to the Buffalo Bills, you know,
I bragged to all my friends, you know...
I said, "My cousin Billy, you know, playing for Buffalo Bills.
You know, that was a proud moment.
I mean, that' a rare... That's a rare thing. I mean...
There's a lot of people that play a lot of different sports
who don't make it to the pros,
so I mean, that's huge.
You know, to have a cousin,
and a close cousin playing in the NFL.
That was a big bragging rights thing there.
ANNOUNCER: All right. We're clear for takeoff.
Everybody, now is the countdown, here we go.
Five, four, three, two one. Fire!
[CROWD CHEERING]
[ANNOUNCER SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY ON PA]
BILL: We're on our way to the field now.
I have to check in before five o'clock.
What the FAA will do,
they check all your log books and your license
and all the insurance cards and everything,
so you have to be current and up-to-date.
Otherwise, they won't let you fly.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
ANNOUNCER: Here to welcome you here to New Jersey,
pray for no more thunder and lightning,
we have the mayor here,
we have a council person... committee woman here,
who are here to encourage you
to stay around until the weather gets cleared up.
I want to say thank you. What you do is important to the economy.
But more importantly, where is my son?
My 10-year-old is here, and I don't think you can put a dollar value
on how important it is that you get children exposure
of what you do as a hobby or as a business.
BUSSIER: Mother Nature is the one that's telling us what to do
and you don't see it coming.
Um...
You're at the mercy of the winds
and the winds can blow in different directions
and they can change on you real quick.
We had a thunderstorm that just went over pouring down rain.
But the briefer said that behind the thunderstorm,
there's clear skies.
So he's gonna let us know definitely at seven o'clock,
whether we should fly or not.
So if that's the case,
if it's still clear and no more cells pop up,
then we'll give it a shot.
I enjoy being out there and seeing how happy people are when they go for a ride.
Most of the passengers we have are first time flights.
And seeing the smiles on their faces,
and how happy they are once they land.
We've had people go up that are afraid of heights,
and they need encouragement
to get in the basket from who they're flying with.
And once they come down,
they can't believe how pleasant it was
and how much they enjoyed it.
And seeing that kind of experience is really enjoyable.
[BURNERS HISSING]
[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]
BILL: Notice right now that the balloons are touching.
You really don't want that to happen.
WOMAN: Yeah, what happens?
-It's okay. -[SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]
JARRELL: I've seen my dad under pressure,
and he is the most
pinpoint, focused individual
I've ever seen in my entire life.
I've seen that look on my dad's face.
Um, you know, sometimes when he's thinking about landing spots,
he's thinking about potential flight paths.
He's just, like, focused on his game.
At the speed we're going, we need to land...
WOMAN: [INDISTINCT] We need to land?
We need to go... We're going too slow
and there's nothing but woods over there.
One thing about being a balloon pilot,
you have to make correct decisions,
and you have to make 'em instantly.
You have to just know which direction is the balloon flying,
how fast is it going.
One thing I've learned, if I don't hurt the balloon,
I won't hurt any of the passengers.
And my number one responsibility is the safety of my passengers.
[PEOPLE CHEERING]
WOMAN: We're not all the way down yet. Hold on.
[UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING]
♪ Fly, until we reach the sky
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
♪ Until we reach the sky
[FIREWORKS CONTINUE BURSTING]
-[INDISTINCT COMMENTARY] -[PEOPLE CHEERING]
BILL: At Buffalo, I was the strongest lineman
and I was the fastest.
We had to run a 100-yard dash
and I ran as fast as I could,
and I beat all the linemen by about 10 yards.
And the coach came up to me, he said, "That was great.
"Never be second."
While I was walking off the field,
a bunch of linemen came up to me and said,
"What you trying to do, rookie?"
So from there on, I had to run fast enough
to beat everybody and never be second.
He used to put me up against
the offensive lineman every single day,
and finally, all of the rookie defensive linemen got cut.
And I was the only defensive lineman left.
One practice, uh, he says,
"Okay, I'm gonna see how tough you are."
There were 12 offensive linemen over there.
He put me one on one
up against every single one of them.
I had to hit and then release.
I literally beat all 12 of 'em.
And I never will forget.
When we were going to the locker room,
the coach came up to me, he said,
"You keep that up, I'll make you all pro."
Buffalo was was a lot of fun.
I met O. J. Simpson,
met Marlin Briscoe
and all the other pros.
Each week the team had to get rid of somebody,
so each week, about 10 guys would get cut.
So we were playing the New York Jets
in our first pre-season game in Birmingham, Alabama.
It was battle time,
and we kicked off to the New York Jets,
and I ran down the field
and made the first opening tackle.
We were losing 20 to nothing
and it was late in the fourth quarter,
and I was going in to block a punt,
and my roommate actually had to block the punt
and I picked up the punt and ran for a touchdown.
There was 22 yards, and I was just so happy.
I was like, "Wow! I made a touchdown."
I mean, my whole football career in college,
I never even touched a football.
And here I was, I'd made a touchdown
in my very first professional football game
and I mean, I was just on cloud nine
and I went running off the field, I was just so happy
and I was getting high fives from
all my football buddies and everything,
and then I was standing there, watching them kick,
getting ready to kick the extra point,
and the referee threw the flag,
and I looked over there,
and there were only 10 men on the field,
and the coach came over to me, he said,
"Aren't you supposed to be out on the field?"
All the way back from Birmingham to Buffalo that night,
they were calling me "$50 Touchdown Kid"
because the coach fined me $50
for not being on the extra point team,
but I didn't care, 'cause I had made a touchdown.
I had the only touchdown. I was the leading score.
The next week,
O. J. Simpson caught a pass and scored a touchdown.
An article came out into the paper,
O. J. Simpson caught a pass,
which tied him for the scoring lead
with Bill Costen.
Both have six points.
That was a total high for me at that time,
because in the Buffalo Bills program,
it showed O. J. Simpson one touchdown,
Bill Costen one touchdown.
Got back to Buffalo,
and the coach called a practice the very next morning.
And the very next morning, right before practice,
they called me into the office.
Any time you had to go see Harvey, that wasn't good news,
because Harvey was the general manager
and he was the guy that cut people.
I said, "Why are they calling me to the office?"
And I went to the office and Harvey says, uh...
"I'm sorry to inform you, but we're cutting you.
I said, "Cutting me? What for?"
And he never told me what for, he says, uh...
'It's just one of those things."
I decided to go to the farm team of Buffalo,
which was the Hartford Knights in Hartford, Connecticut.
And I had never even heard of Hartford, Connecticut.
I said, "What's a Hartford?" you know.
And during that time,
all of the Hartford Knights players,
we practiced every night.
All the players had daytime jobs,
And then we played our games on the weekends,
on Saturday night, usually.
So, I had to get a job,
because of the salary that the Knights were paying was small.
So I got a job with Travelers Data Center,
and so I was working every day in the data center
and then each night we used to practice,
and then we played the games on the weekends.
Here I was in a brand new city,
and I was still planning to go back to Atlanta
after the football season was over.
But like I said, I got the job with the Travelers,
and I started meeting women,
and I started meeting a lot of women,
and I started going to different clubs up here,
and I said, "Wow, this is a fun, fun little town."
So I made a decision to stay in Hartford,
and during that time, you know, I met a bunch of guys.
We got together and we formed a chess club.
And in the chess club, we started having parties
and giving back to the community
through the club and everything.
So it was a real fun time in Hartford after football.
I was going to a party.
And it was at the Holiday Inn in Hartford,
And I walked into the party and I saw this big Afro.
I said, "Whoa! Who is this?"
I guess I need to meet her.
LYNDA COSTEN: I was sitting down talking to some friends of mine,
and Bill happened to walk into the room,
and as, um, he was walking in,
I happened to look towards the door
and our eyes caught each other,
and he kind of smiled
with that innocent young boy look.
And after I talked to my friends
for about a half hour,
he came walking over and introduced himself as Bill Costen.
I wasn't all that. I was... Actually, I was shy.
I had to get a few nips in me
before I opened up to talk.
LYNDA: He started up, um, a social club
in which a group of us would get together
and give events and invite all the professionals from within the region
and people would come from all over the state, Western Mass,
and they were really large events.
And that's where our socializing began.
BILL: I was totally in love. I always respected Lynda
because of her mind.
I mean, she had a sharp mind.
She'd do everything. She was a bookworm.
And she retained everything she knew.
But she would always know the answer to everything.
And we became best friends.
I just always knew that... The two of us working together,
we could just conquer the world.
Very good.
He kept telling me never in 1000 years would I guess who it would be.
And about two minutes later, I said, "Joe, Bill."
-Now, I have a question. -[LAUGHING]
Yesterday, I went shopping.
I don't shop very often.
Do these pants make my butt look big?
[LAUGHING]
This is Alexandra. This is my daughter.
-How are you today? -Hi.
-Nice to meet you. -Nice to see you.
She was a little tiny thing.
Some of the sponsors are here. Go out, put your basket out.
You know, get it ready for rigging if you can, you know,
keep the cover on, uh, if it's going to start raining.
Um, we would like to see few people in flight this morning.
[CLEARS THROAT] I know it's difficult, uh,
because of the mist, so let's wait and see what happens.
We'll come back at 7:00 and we'll talk about it, okay?
My parents are afraid. They're on their way over.
Morning like this, we got here.
Every... Fog is starting to lift.
Airport is all clear, all the way around.
People are popping up, they're leaving.
We're hemming and hawing. "Uh, should we go? Should we not go?"
We finally make the decision. "Okay. We're gonna go."
Crew gets in, I get in, we lift off,
we probably went about 300 yards outside the airport.
And it was fog for about the next 45 miles as far as you could see,
we're hitting the burner and the car horns,
so we could tell who was who and where they were.
They couldn't see us. We couldn't see them.
We had no idea where the ground was.
Flying dead into a fog bank. And we had to come down, we were running out of fuel.
And it was... We had no idea what was below us.
Power lines, trees, water, cars.
We had no idea.
Once we got above the fog and above the clouds,
it was like just a rolling bed of clouds,
like, as far as you can see, it's just white
and it's the most... I was probably seven at the time,
and it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
And we're just drifting toward the sun slowly.
It was like a piece of heaven. It was like I was there.
I'm looking up at my dad and, you know,
he seems calm, as always.
He'll never show any expression on his face, you know,
he's just calm, collected,
but then I realized, we were up there for a while.
BILL: I tried to maneuver to get back over
to where it was less fog, but we never made it.
We just kept drifting more and more toward the mountains
and I knew there was a river.
I've flown that valley many times.
I knew there was a river coming up,
and, uh, I knew we had to land,
at some point, you're gonna run out of gas.
So we were up about 600 feet
and I also knew there was a big line of power lines across the whole valley.
So, that was my concern, coming down in that fog,
which you couldn't see anything,
and wondering where those power lines were,
but I had no choice, I had to come down,
so we eased the balloon right down little by little
and all of a sudden, I saw the power lines and I panicked,
and I just went up, maybe to a 1000 feet.
JARRELL: I... I heard a message from the Lord, I feel.
There was a butterfly that was pretty high up in the fog,
just flying around the basket,
fluttering around, going away,
came back, fluttered in front of my face, went away.
And something just told me, um,
you know, follow the butterfly
and, you know, I whispered it to my dad.
Fortunately, you know, he got out of his zone
and he heard me.
And you know, when the butterfly dipped down,
he stopped burning, and the basket would dip down.
The butterfly came back up, he would burn again,
and he basically just followed the butterfly pattern.
And we found our way to a little clearing,
and we were able to land there,
and we were so grateful, uh,
just because the farm was so dense, so thick.
And actually, one of our crew members was in the basket at the time
when he... when he jumped out, when we were actually in the swamp.
So we had to actually push the balloon
over a little swamp into the clearing.
LARRY WEBSTER: My manager went on vacation.
And then when he came back from vacation,
all he could talk about was this balloon experience that he had.
This was back in '75 and [SCOFFS] nobody was talking ballooning.
And so he said, "Well, uh, I'm gonna put a club together, maybe,
or get a bunch of guys together," and we didn't know what "together" meant.
But it sounded like fun.
BILL: One day, on a Sunday afternoon, my cousin came by with his boss,
knocked on the door, I went to the door and they were all excited.
And they showed me this brochure. They said, "Let's start a balloon club."
I said, "What's a balloon?"
And I had never seen a balloon, so they showed me
pictures of the Budweiser balloon. I said, "Oh, nice balloon."
I was drinking many Budweisers at the time.
I said, "Well, what does the balloon do?"
And they said, "Well, you ride in this little basket
underneath the balloon."
LARRY: I knew his answer was gonna be "No."
I knew it.
But he surprised me, he says, "Yeah, let's check it out."
BILL: My first flight was at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut,
and my instructor and I took off in the balloon.
He said, "I want you to know I'm not gonna do anything. I'll tell you what to do,
but you're gonna fly the whole flight."
And he explained the instruments that were in the balloon.
He said, "I want you to fly this flight without the instrument."
BILL: I was always confident that I could just do anything,
so the flight was very beautiful
and that's the main thing I saw.
I said, "Wow, this is so pretty."
Just seeing the countryside and everything. And he said, "You're a natural flyer,"
because, you know, I blew the whole flight, landed, and I was just so right there.
BILL: We hooked up with three other people,
met at a bank, signed a joint loan,
bought a balloon for $4,800
and started Sky Unlimited Balloon Club.
I immediately saw the commercial part of ballooning.
I came up with the concept of putting the state seal of Connecticut
on the side of a balloon and coming up
with the state of Connecticut bicentennial balloon.
So, my ballooning start
came with designing that balloon, proposing it to the manufacturer,
the manufacturer was excited about it,
and they had me meet Bob Waligunda,
who was the distributor for the whole East Coast.
BOB: I actually first started ballooning... I saw a balloon in college,
and, uh, I got excited about it.
In fact, I saw it one day, the next morning I was taking lessons,
and then I flew out to see if all in the Med Yost out in Sioux Falls, South Dakota,
and he's the father of modern hot-air ballooning.
He's the one who designed and built the original hot air balloon.
And they were looking for some inexpensive way to
train dirigible pilots. They were using helium balloons,
which were very expensive, so he came up with the hot air concept.
BILL: I hitchhiked to New Rochelle, New York, because Bob Waligunda was gonna be
at a balloon festival in New Rochelle.
He told me all these dreams that he was doing with ballooning.
He was coming up with a balloon racing circuit
that would go all over the country and fly in different festivals.
And he said, you know, if I bought my first balloon
that he would make me a dealer.
So, one of the guys in the club, I talked him into,
uh, putting up the money for another balloon
and I would put up the dealership.
So that's how Sky Endeavors got formed.
BOB: I got in early, and when I saw the balloon,
it... it's not the typical aviation story
where you see the birds soar and the eagles fly, I said, "Oh my gosh, I could
put somebody's name on that and make a fortune."
So that was that was the whole thing,
it was a commercial, uh, business enterprise for me,
and I said this is absolutely wonderful.
We met great people. Joe Kittinger, for example.
Joe made history when he jumped out of a gas balloon at 102,000 ft.
Ben Abruzzo, who was one of the first to fly across the ocean.
Ed Yost. People that were truly
pioneers in the business. Old-timers, people that have been into ballooning
since its inception. Uh, Ed Yost's original groundcrew and we all
became very, very good friends.
I met Bill with Bob Waligunda in 1979.
Uh, Bob came down for a promotion for the Bay Hills Golf tournament
and a balloon race, and he asked me to join his team.
Uh, there were three balloons and Bill was one of the balloonist.
I remembered seeing Bill as a football player for the Buffalo Bills.
And he was a great athlete,
and I was very good and successful, uh, balloonist.
The common bond was ballooning and the love of the sport,
the love of the business,
and the fun we all had.
And as ballooning grew, we grew with it.
Ever wonder what it's like to fly like a bird, high up in the sky?
Just think of it. No more car fumes, no more stoplights
no state cops. Nah, just you
and that old-fashioned wind power.
We were both working full time
while we were doing ballooning
and some of the sales distribution.
BILL: But over the years, more and more people wanted to go up in the balloon.
So I was pretty much doing a full time business just on the weekends
and working as an underwriter during the week.
LYNDA: So we almost had no time because we're flying in the morning,
going to work, then getting out just early enough,
so we could fly at night
during the summertime, and being young and youthful, you know,
you don't really feel it for the first year or two.
I'm standing next to Lynda, uh, Lynda Costen,
and she's gonna tell us about ballooning...
BILL: One day, I woke up and my wife didn't go to work,
and I went to work and she didn't go to work the next day
and I went to work and she didn't go to work
for the next two or three weeks.
That's what was going on, she said, "I quit my job."
I said, "You quit your job? What are you talking about, you quit your job?"
During that time, she didn't know that our companies were merging
and that the other company who bought our company
was weeding out under-riders and workers from my job.
And I was so mad that she quit her job
and I had a feeling that I was going to get fired.
I went into the office and gave my two week resignation
and I quit my job. So there we were, she didn't have a job,
I didn't have a job, and the very next week, she told me
that she was pregnant with my first son.
I said, "What?"
And she says, "I'm pregnant."
That's when ballooning became full time.
LYNDA: Ballooning is very much of a fantasy.
And it's very much of a romance.
People really have fantasies about wanting to go up in a balloon,
and I would say to all of them, "Once in your life, go ahead and do it
because it's better than you can ever imagine that it can be."
And for all the people that have any fears about it,
It's nothing like standing on a building.
It's nothing like flying in a small plane.
There is actually no real sensation of movement.
You close your eyes, you can't tell you left the ground,
and it's very safe and very calm sport.
I like the advertising portion of it,
and I like being able to approach organizations
that needed to realize
how this visual concept could accent their public relations in their advertising
at a cost that was probably a lot less expensive than some of the air time that
they were buying. And the visibility and the thousands of people
that actually will see their brand and their name.
BOB: If you're flying for a sponsor, you're their representative.
So it's not that you're just flying with their name
on the balloon or their product name, but, you know, you may have to represent them
in a press conference. You may have to speak to their products.
And Bill was articulate. He was very bright.
And, uh, I knew that I could always rely on him
to put his best foot forward for the sponsor.
And everything we did was for the sponsors.
I mean, it was something that they were paying the bill,
so we wanted to give them he most for their money.
LARRY: Bill took a real liking to it and took it beyond,
you know, even our wildest dreams. Those initial stages,
we weren't sure where it was going,
but it look like Bill had made the decision to take it very, very far.
BILL: Most of our business got started advertising.
We would take the balloon to companies that were having, uh, corporate parties, or
they were introducing a new product and we would put banners
on the side of the balloon.
LYNDA: We do weddings, outdoor events for companies where they wanna have
tether rides or special promotions, and we do regular fantasy champagne flights.
We have executive limo flight, both about an hour to an hour fifteen minutes.
Um, we do just about anything you can do with balloons and outdoor advertising,
rooftop balloons or anything dealing with outdoor advertising.
BOB: When you talk about a black balloonist, it was an opportunity.
And in today's world,
people make a big deal about black and white.
Well, the reality was that this was a business,
and and it was an opportunity that
we could both take advantage of.
I liked Bill the minute I saw him, it didn't matter with what color he was.
Uh, it was in his eyes. It was, in his manners, it's his enthusiasm
for what we were doing. And he had a great sense of humor and we'd laugh.
We'd just have fun. And if you could do something in life where you can laugh
and have fun and and still make a lot of money,
then you're in the right place.
CHRISTOPHER: In ballooning, we're really in the entertainment business.
Uh, we're entertaining people.
They come out to enjoy this ride.
If they just get on the bus or get on a plane, it's not quite the same thing.
So we're really host when people come out for a balloon ride.
And I always thought that Bill would be a very,
you know, fun host to be with because he would be enjoying it just as much as
the people experiencing it for the first time,
-Bye! Bye, Mommy. -Bye!
BILL: When I first started ballooning, I was part of this balloon racing circuit,
so I was constantly, um, competing against the other pilots.
And I was, you know, we had prize money, so I was competing to win.
But I was up against some of the most experienced pilots in the world,
and, um, that made me better.
Winds and light and calm.
Looks like we're gonna have a perfect flight.
The Hare and Hound race.
The hare would take off first, it would land.
The Hounds, which were the rest of the balloons
would take off after the Hare balloon.
At the end of the hour, the Hounds would land closest to the Hare balloon.
Whoever landed the closest would win the race.
There's the X right there. We never saw it.
-Where' the beam bag... -Where's the beam bag? Did we throw it?
WOMAN: Oh, my goodness. Look at that.
BILL: Over the years I became more conservative.
If I'm flying in a familiar territory, I look at the end result,
Where do I wanna be? And my concentrations are based on, uh, you know,
what wind I need to utilize to get me to that point,
because at every altitude, winds are blowing in different directions.
So I'm able to maneuver to different places.
So I take a lot of pride now until picking out a spot, and literally,
sometimes I tell the crew, go to that spot.
As long as you've got two winds,
you can control. If you got a left wind and a right wind,
you just have to find out what level of the atmosphere
is going in a particular direction that you're going in.
BILL: When I transferred from University of Nebraska to Morris Brown College,
my uncle said, "You wanna go to lunch?" I said, "Yeah."
Took me to lunch and introduced me to Martin Luther King.
And I didn't know who Martin Luther King was.
And this was in 1966.
Having no black experience at all, I vowed then
that I was going to learn black history,
that wasn't even taught in the black school that I went to.
He was pretty much a collector
and very much organized.
PATRICIA: We belonged to a postcard club and got to know a lot of dealers.
And we follow these shows around the Northeast
just about every weekend that he could do it.
There were even occasions when, uh, we came away
with nothing or one or two fabulous additions to his collection.
This is about 30 years of collecting...
BILL: The cost and cultural exhibit is a black traveling exhibit that I take
around two different schools and companies, and I've come up with
a magnificent African American history exhibit.
And it's amazing how many black kids
have no idea... Uh, have no idea of their heritage.
The exhibit that I've come up with
covers everything from Africa to current day Black lives matter.
JOHN: Being the editor of the Northend Agents,
he used to come in and sit down,
and we used to just talk and talk about events.
And Bill is very good with a camera.
He liked to take a lot of pictures.
He's been showcasing the lives of people
and putting their best facets on display.
He's always been good at pinpointing those strengths
in people and bringing them to the surface.
BILL: I was doing a Women's History Month exhibit and this little girl,
about eight or nine years old, she came up to me, she said, "I didn't know,
uh, women could fly airplanes."
Well, last year I was at the library and a lady came up to me
and she says, "I was that little girl to ask you
that question about Bessie Coleman.
And now I'm a student pilot."
So you never know what just one picture
in a young child's mind
can... what it can turn into.
Here's a toast to all of us being here as a family.
[CHEERING]
BILL: I think, one of the biggest things that I've learned in ballooning is
is failure is not an option.
Failure is usually one step from success,
And I've learned that you have to work hard.
You have to be dedicated. You have to find people who are loyal to you.
You treat them right, work as a team,
and you can really achieve whatever you want.
Ballooning families always socialize with other ballooning families.
From the time you're born. Okay, as long as you know that there was a festival,
you could go there by yourself and you'll see a family
that you know and you spend that weekend with them.
Um, it's very special that you have relationships with people,
um, that people know each other multi-generational.
The second milestone in Bill's life that I thought would be fun
we got to interview Bill,
and some of the people who played important roles in his life.
And because I couldn't interview him,
without spoiling the surprise, I decided to improvise.
[PEOPLE LAUGHING]
So Bill, this is your life according to me.
[PEOPLE LAUGHING]
BILL: I chose to do ballooning full time.
That locked me out of a lot of people who were afraid of heights.
So I chose a very difficult business to partake in.
So it's been very difficult just surviving hot-air ballooning
and then going into every... everywhere I went,
when people found out what I did,
"You do what? You crazy," and I would hear everything.
If you look around at the other balloons in the cruise,
you don't see people of color.
-WOMAN: Oh, no. -REPORTER: And it raises the question,
so what about someone who replaces you when you retire?
And as the person that writes about it, does PR and promotion,
it's like, you know, there's gotta be some way to start.
Everybody sort of has their passion.
And so it's... How do you start some kind of foundation, something, who trains?
How do we get kids to follow you, so that once you're gone, the legacy doesn't end there?
For some reason, people of color
haven't shared experiences like the white balloon flyers.
They're telling their friends and their relatives
that it's the best thing since sliced bread.
So they're saying, "Okay, let's go up."
And it's just that we don't have a history of,
let's say, taking chances when it comes to something in a sport, you know,
hang gliding, jumping out of planes, with parachutes. You don't see a lot of
people of color doing that.
So it's changing. And I think, what Bill's, uh,
contribution to 40 years of ballooning, he made a big difference
in those experiences, and that's gonna propel the the business
and the experience of ballooning for years to come.
My name is Mick Murphy, real honor and privilege to be here
not only on behalf of the Balloon Federation of America,
but as a good friend to Bill Costen.
Today, I'm here to present the Yost master pilot award,
which has been given out to only a handful of pilots at this time.
Represent over 40 years of safe flying.
So it's quite an honor to receive the highest recognition of the federation
for an individual pilots skills, but by someone he knew and respected
without further ado, Bill, please join me on the stage
[ALL CLAPPING]
BILL: To receive an award based on the man
who started hot-air ballooning, I'm totally thrilled.
Back in early days when I used to sit, you know,
in a restaurant or a bar, listening to the stories of how he came up
with the idea of a burner
to, you know, propel the balloon up in the air to have flown with him
and against him in different balloon races,
you know, I just can't even imagine
getting an award for all the fun that I've had over the years.
First of all, I wanna thank my crew, my whole crew stand up, please.
[CHEERING AND CLAPPING]
BILL: This is for all of us.
Those people over there used to get up at 4:00 in the morning,
come out to Farmington, helped me set up the balloon, jump in a car,
chase the balloon wherever I land. I never knew where I was gonna land.
They would run through the fields. Come.
They have actually saved my life many times.
And I just thank you. This goes to all of us.
I mean, I couldn't have done none of this without you.
Well, thank you very much.
I want people to know that I spent my life entertaining.
I spent my life trying to be safe and helping them
to enjoy, experience that they never would have experienced,
had they not chosen to go up in a balloon.
Cheers to the best hot-air balloon pilot I've ever had in my life.
[CHEERING]
I would like people to know that that I love people. And I love...
seeing people have fun.
CHANTAL: It was Tuesday, February 26 2019,
and I received a call from my dad.
He said that he was having difficulty walking
and wasn't sure what was going on.
I told him to go to the hospital.
I remember he had to stay the night there that night,
and I was driving home when I got the call.
He said the doctor said that he had a stroke and I immediately pulled over.
I couldn't see. I couldn't breathe. I was crying hysterically.
And he just stayed on the phone with me.
I don't even know how long the time went by so fast,
but he was there.
When I think of my dad, that's who I think of,
just a genuine, selfless, godly man who would do anything for anyone.
The next morning, I remember waking up at my brother's house
and received a call from a family friend.
She had just found out about Dad having a stroke.
She began to ask what she could do.
She wanted to get some community members together and figure out
how they can help.
And suddenly she started to weep.
And in that moment,
I realized that my dad is not only my hero,
but I share him with so many others.
Following the stroke, Dad was determined
to get back out there and live his life
with his new normal. Within a month, he had gained his confidence back
and was walking unassisted. He was back at different events,
doing photography and displaying his exhibit.
And I'm just so proud of
his level of determination and perseverance,
and I'm convinced nothing will stop him.
It's really difficult to describe the type of human being my father is.
But I'm certain that the world needs more people like him.
My entire life, he taught me that I could do all things
through Christ who strengthens me.
There's no mountain that God cannot move
and there's nothing that you can't overcome.
To see my dad through a different lens and to tell his story,
as best as possible has been such a challenge.
But his voice, his voice remains in my head
and I'm just grateful to be able to experience him as my father.
And I'm thankful for all of the moments that we continue to share.
It's hard, but I'm learning that this is the circle of life.
And when he passes me his baton and I continue to walk in my light,
I know that he'll always be there,
encouraging me and cheering me on.
[GAS HISSING]
Thank you for allowing me to share my father's story with you,
And I want to leave you with one thing that my dad always told me
and I say it in the most cliche way there is,
The sky's the limit.
Literally, the sky is the absolute limit.
[LAUGHS] All right, go ahead.
Oh, yeah.
Go, Dad, Go!
All right. Come back this way.
Look at him go! [LAUGHS]
That's amazing.
♪ This life is but a dream
♪ We can make come true
♪ But it is upto you and me
♪ It's what I've learned from you
♪ Our reality
♪ Is something we can hold
♪ Something we can mold
♪ Into anything We want it to be
♪ You can fly so high above
♪ You can laugh And you can love
♪ And I love you always be
♪ You'll be right here with me
♪ You can soar right through The wind
♪ You can lose or you can win
♪ But you won't know till You try
♪ That's the way you live Your life
♪ I remember what you said
♪ To live my life With no regrets
♪ Because we only get One chance
♪ To make it count And make it last
♪ Even when you go away
♪ The things you taught me Always stays
♪ On my mind and in my heart
♪ So we'll never be apart
♪ Apart
♪ I just want you to know
♪ That your love Helped me grow
♪ I don't have to be afraid
♪ It'll all be okay
♪ You can soar Right through the wind
♪ You can lose or you can win
♪ I don't need to say it loud
♪ But I hope I made you proud
♪ I remember what you said
♪ To live my life With no regret
♪ Because we only get One chance
♪ To make it count And make it last
♪ Even when you're far away.
♪ The things you taught me Always stay
♪ On my mind and in my heart
♪ So we will never be apart