Balloonfest: Where does truth end and fake news begin

The perception of Cleveland's 1986 Balloonfest has evolved over the decades, but is the recent storytelling any where close to the truth? (Mark Duncan/Associated Press)

The Plain Dealer’s contemporaneous storytelling of Cleveland’s record-breaking 1986 Balloonfest described a wonder to behold -- the majestic liftoff of 1.5 million helium-filled balloons that swarmed Terminal Tower and blotted out the sky over throngs of people in Public Square, a memory-making spectacle marred by a few unforeseen mishaps.

In the newspaper’s 25th anniversary telling of the story in 2011, Balloonfest was a “cool idea” that ended up being more bad news than good, with too many behind-the-scenes headaches and harmful consequences to have been worthwhile.

The 30th anniversary telling in 2016 largely repeated the 2011 version, while trying to explain why the original telling of the story was overly positive.

In 2018, The Atlantic Magazine’s telling carried a headline saying the event went “horribly wrong” and used words like “tragic” and “havoc,” highlighting a 6-minute documentary called “The Doomed Cleveland Balloonfest of ‘86.”

And a 2020 telling of the tale, in a web-based magazine, had the headline, “How Cleveland’s Balloonfest ’86 Became a Disaster.”

All of versions of the tale are accurate, except for calling it a disaster. No definition of that word fits what happened that day.

But are any of the versions true?

We agonize in our newsroom sometimes over whether our stories provide a complete picture of what we seek to report. We wish to be as complete as possible, but we are only as good as the information we can gather. Despite our best efforts, quotes and facts in a piece can all be accurate while the overall piece carries false implications.

Did that happen with one of our iterations on Balloonfest? How did the event go from being a civic celebration and point of pride 37 years ago to the horrible, embarrassing disaster that is the perception today?

I’ve been compelled to examine Balloonfest because a documentary filmmaker called for a comment on why our 2011 version was fake news. He said we had incorrectly described a largely successful event as a disaster and even reported it killed someone. I told him I’d have to look into it and get back to him.

For the uninitiated, Balloonfest was the brainchild of what is now the United Way of Greater Cleveland, which thought it would be so magical as to attract young people into lives of philanthropy and volunteering.

The original plan was to send 2.2 million helium-filled orbs skyward. The record had been set the previous December to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Disneyland in California, when at least 1 million and possibly 1.2 million balloons were launched. Sources vary.

On Sept. 27, 1986, with Public Square crammed with more people than had assembled there in four decades, Cleveland did break the record, with 1.5 million balloons. The event was listed in the Guinness World Book of Records once, in 1988, before the category was abolished.

(Dave Andersen/The Plain Dealer)

The Plain Dealer covered Balloonfest in depth, in a series of stories examining the people staging the event, the behind-the-scenes work it took to get so many balloons ready, the Willard company that manufactured the balloons and the goal of activating children and teenagers as budding philanthropists. (Children sold tickets to defray $220,000 of the $500,000 cost.)

In the Sunday Plain Dealer the day after the launch, a big photo of the balloons dominated the front page, along with a story narrating the day’s events. Inside the A section were more photos and two more stories, including one in which civic advocates marveled at the size of the happy crowd.

The main story did describe unexpected downsides. A storm rolled in after the release, unexpectedly pushing many of the balloons back to earth. The Plain Dealer featured a photo of them on Lake Erie, where they impeded a search for two missing boaters who, it turned out, had drowned. Burke Lakefront Airport closed for 30 minutes because of balloons on the runway. A 10-car collision occurred on the westbound Shoreway near Aviation High School, either because of the balloons rolling on the road or because drivers were gawking at them instead of the road.

Shortly after the launch of Balloonfest '86, thousands of balloon began dropping into Lake Erie and around downtown Cleveland. (Dave Andersen/The Plain Dealer)

Clearly, though, the event was viewed at the time as a success.

Skip forward 25 years. The Plain Dealer published a short story to remind people about Balloonfest. Here’s the top:

At the time it seemed like a cool idea — gather 2,500 people on Public Square to inflate 1.5 million helium balloons and then launch the entire colorful cluster into the sky.

The plan 25 years ago by United Way of Greater Cleveland was to set a Guinness world record for balloon launches and to kick off its annual fundraiser.

But it’s not clear whether the record was broken, and despite the awesome spectacle witnessed by thousands of people packed on the Square, there were too many behind-the-scene headaches for United Way to ever want to do it again.

Environmentalists complained the balloons were pollutants; the Coast Guard, searching for a lost boater in Lake Erie, complained that balloons landing in the water hindered their search; and a Geauga County woman complained that balloons landing on her property spooked her prized Arabian horses.

Even Canadians complained of balloons littering their beaches.

The drifting spheres caused a 30-minute closing of Burke Lakefront Airport and, according to police, caused a couple of car accidents as drivers swerved to avoid slow-motion blizzards of multicolored orbs or took their eyes off the road to gawk at the overhead spectacle… So much for BalloonFest ’86 on that rainy Saturday afternoon, Sept. 27, a quarter of a century ago. It was fun while it lasted.

That’s a more negative take than the original coverage, although it never says Balloonfest killed someone, despite the filmmaker’s claim to me. The story does not use the words “tragic,” “tragedy” or “disaster.” It does report the spouse of a drowned boater sued the event over the difficulty of the Coast Guard search. Overall, it is an even-handed account of what happened, with more emphasis on the mishaps than the spectacle.

(I don’t know why the story left unclear whether a record was broken. Plenty of resources existed to prove that it was.)

Likewise, the 30th anniversary Plan Dealer story in 2011 was straightforward, exploring the good and bad parts of the day.

Sometime after that, though, the narrative took a giant negative leap. The spark might have been the Atlantic’s take on a documentary in 2018, (It’s on YouTube.) the one about the “Doomed Cleveland Balloonfest:”

The Film’s mounting sense of dread prepares us for what happens next. The balloons are promptly brought down by an approaching storm. They wreak havoc on the city, litter Lake Erie, and, tragically, impede a Coast Guard search-and-rescue mission for two missing fishermen. Balloonfest serves as a sobering reminder of the shortsightedness of humankind.

After the Atlantic piece, the floodgate opened on increasingly histrionic headlines on the web. Here's a sampling of what showed up over the next two years:

“The Disastrous Aftermath of Cleveland’s Release of 1.5 Million Balloons”

“Relive the hope and horror of Cleveland’s Balloonfest ‘86”

“How Cleveland’s 1986 Balloonfest resulted in two deaths”

The Balloon Fest ’86: When Cleveland’s Spectacle Became a Tragedy -- The unfortunate yet historical day when 1.5 million balloons killed two innocent men”

OK, so let’s talk about the two fishermen.

According to Plain Dealer stories from 1986, Bernard H. Sulzer, 39, and Raymond Broderick, 40, were neighbors who went fishing at 7 p.m. on the day before the balloon launch. At 8:30 that night, a monster storm roared through Cleveland, with tree-snapping winds of 40 to 60 miles per hour and downpours that flooded streets. At least 16 high school football games were canceled or cut short. The wind tore into the balloons that had been prepared for launch just before 2 p.m. the next day.

Sulzer and Broderick had planned to end their fishing trip at midnight, and their families reported them missing in the morning. The Coast Guard found their 16-foot aluminum boat anchored just west of the breakwall. Two life jackets and a pair of tennis shoes were floating nearby. Their fishing gear was in the boat, but the engine and gas tank were missing. Water in the craft led the Coast Guard to speculate that the storm-tossed lake capsized the boat, which later righted itself. The Coast Guard thought the two men might have tried to swim to the breakwall.

The Coast Guard used a helicopter, divers and boats to conduct a search but had to suspend operations when the Saturday storm blew through -- after the balloon launch. When the Coast Guard search resumed, the balloons were everywhere, and searchers said trying to discern a floating person or life vest among the multi-colored balloons was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Broderick’s body was found in the lake more than a week later, a quarter mile east of the Edgewater Marina. Sulzer’s body washed ashore at Edgewater Park on Oct. 12.

Consider this: By the time Cleveland’s balloons were released, the two fishermen were missing for at least 14 hours. If they dropped into the water with the storm at 8:30, it would have been more than 17 hours. Might they still have been alive when the balloons went up? The average water temperature in Lake Erie on Sept. 27 is 68 degrees. This is what the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary says about that temperature: “If you lose control of your craft and find yourself immersed in the middle of a lake (hopefully wearing a life jacket), you won’t survive 12 hours in water at 60 to 70 degrees.”

On top of that, the two would have been fighting against Lake Erie’s notoriously strong currents during powerful storms.

To say that Balloonfest killed the fishermen is ridiculous. To paint Balloonfest as a horror or disaster is, too. Yes there were highway collisions, but none appear serious. Yes, the airport closed for 30 minutes, but we’re talking about Burke Lakefront, not Cleveland Hopkins. How big of a deal is Burke Lakefront closing for 30 minutes? We’ve regularly closed it for entire weekends for air shows or car races.

So, was Balloonfest a good news story or a bad one? To answer that, I’ve been trying to pinpoint when the general view of Balloonfest went from success to failure.

I started with the reporter who covered it for The Plain Dealer. She is one of the finest journalists I know. She had a storied career. But if I name her here, search engines will forever tie her to Balloonfest. I can’t make something as goofy as Balloonfest her legacy.

She barely remembers Balloonfest. By luck of the draw, she had weekend duty when Balloonfest happened, so she was there to cover it. She remembered the few mishaps she reported, but did not remember people thinking of it as a failure.

The Plain Dealer photographer who shot it, Dave Andersen, is still in our newsroom – the longest serving journalist on our team. He’s retiring in August and told me he has been thinking over the many highlights of his career. Until I asked him, though, he had not thought about Balloonfest. Like his reporting colleague, he barely remembers it. (I’m naming Dave because we are republishing his photos with this column.)

1.5 million balloons (give or take) were held in netting awaiting release before the United Way's Balloonfest '86 promotion. (Dave Andersen/The Plain Dealer)

I wondered whether reporting in ensuing days and weeks contained negative perspectives, as information about the mishaps became more clear.

In the clips, I found an Oct. 1 story about the United Way’s 1986 annual meeting that says: “The success of launching 1.4 (sic) million balloons at Public Square last Saturday highlighted the meeting. Balloons were the centerpiece of each table and a slideshow pictured the event.”

If the event had been a disaster, I hardly think balloons would have been the centerpieces.

A Plain Dealer editorial a few weeks later about the United Way referred to Balloonfest “fun-filled.” Again, that’s not what the Editorial Board would have said about a disaster.

Clearly, in 1986, the region remained proud of what it accomplished.

The earliest reference I can find with a negative connotation is in 1994, in a profile of George Fraser, who was the United Way’s director of marketing and communication in 1986. He said Balloonfest was his greatest success and his biggest failure, but the piece does not elaborate much on his thinking. He still had a big aerial photo of the balloon release on his wall at the time, though. I was unable to reach Fraser for clarification.

I hope it was not our 2011 story that began the slow change in perception.

That brings me back to my original question: Which of the versions of the many stories on Balloonfest are true?

I think I side with the documentary film maker who has examined the recent reports and found them to be fake news. I’m talking about the reports calling it a tragic disaster. So many have gone that way in the past few years. I buy more into the original reporting in September 1986, which was exhaustive and detailed, portraying the day as a win for Cleveland. As I said earlier, I know well the reporter who covered it, and she was a stickler for getting things right.

I reject any notion that retrospectives in The Plain Dealer were fake news. I wish they had focused a bit more on the magic of the day, along with the mishaps, but the stories in no way made the leap of later tellings into the realm of the ridiculous.

In the end, despite being an oddball idea for building civic pride, Balloonfest put Cleveland on the international map for a news cycle, with spectacular imagery, in an era when the city was struggling with its identity. The event activated a lot of children to sell tickets, getting them involved in volunteering. And It set a record, which likely will never be broken because we know now how bad balloons are for the environment. No one should do a balloon launch ever again.

And for a journalist, Balloonfest is an always needed reminder to keep agonizing over how we do our jobs. Gathering collections of facts and quotes is not enough. The goal has to be truth.

I’m at cquinn@cleveland.com.

Thanks for reading.