Here is an article about the pilot of the balloon that Tasker found and sent me that was published in May 77 in People magazine:
May 30, 1977 Vol. 7 No. 21A
Superman or a Nut? No, Says Karl Thomas, He Just Needs An Annual Adventure
By Alan Steinberg
For ordinary mortals the idea of crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon is madness. But for incurable adventurers it remains a dream, a quest to outdare Lindbergh. To date there have been 13 serious attempts to drift in the winds from the U.S. to Europe or Africa. None succeeded. Five men have died trying.
Karl Thomas of Troy, Mich. made his solo effort last June. His nine-story-high, helium-filled aerostat, named The Spirit of '76 in honor of the Bicentennial, lifted off from the Lakehurst, N.J. Naval Air Station on a calm summer evening. For the first 31 hours the balloon drifted eastward. But 400 miles south of Newfoundland Thomas ran into violent thunderstorms.
Lightning exploded all around him, and 50-mph winds kicked up monstrous waves below. Suddenly, Thomas recalls, a "ferocious downdraft" sent his craft plunging toward the dark Atlantic. Working to separate the gondola from the helium envelope before crashing, Thomas began to hit the emergency releases, but two of them popped prematurely, tilting the gondola on its side and dumping out 1,000 pounds of equipment, including Thomas' parachute and raft. With all that weight unintentionally jettisoned, the lightened balloon shot upward.
"In dangerous situations I've always acted aggressively and gotten myself out of trouble," says Thomas. He did so again, jumping about 220 feet into the sea, arms flailing to stay upright. He hit the water feet first, and the impact fractured three ribs and broke a blood vessel in his lung. Despite "astounding pain," he recounts, he somehow found his raft bobbing in the waves and clambered aboard. "I thought, god-dammit, I will survive! Somebody has lasted 37 days out here. Let's try for more." Mercifully, it was not that long. After four days and nights Thomas was plucked from the sea by a Europe-bound Russian freighter, which took him to Rotterdam.
Seven months later, back in Michigan, he attended a banquet during which a speaker described his Atlantic survival as "a miracle." Politely but firmly, Thomas disagreed. "People make their own miracles," he insisted. "I worked hard at staying alive, and when you accomplish something, you don't claim it a miracle. You claim it for yourself."
Who is Karl Thomas? He is a 28-year-old German-born aviator and businessman and a trained psychologist. Most of all he is—for lack of a more precise description—an "adventurer." Thomas himself warns egocentrically that "you have to make me up as you go along. I am not a conveniently labeled commodity. I am Karl Thomas, and Karl Thomas is many, many things."
He is, for certain, a supremely confident individual. "An adventurer is a person whose self-image actually exceeds what he is," Thomas says. "In a sense he's an egotist. He thinks he has few limitations, that he can overcome anything put in his path."
Five years ago, in order to "discover the essence of my personality and to enliven daily routine with stressful situations, which we need to grow and change," Thomas assembled an "adventure team" of friends and business associates. They agreed to embark on a series of once-in-a-lifetime experiences—one every year.
It was a flying and deep-sea-diving trip in the Bahamas in 1972, exploration of Mexico's Baja California the following year. They rafted the Colorado River in 1974, and on a $300 bet Thomas and a friend scrambled out of the Grand Canyon at night within a five-hour time limit. They made it with 18 minutes to spare. He went to Central and South America in 1975; when in Guatemala Thomas participated in his first bullfight. Both the bull and Thomas survived, to the cheers of a thoroughly drunk crowd.
The near-disastrous end to his transatlantic balloon attempt last year did not discourage him. A mere 50 hours after his arrival in Rotterdam by rescue ship, a patched-up Thomas was off on a balloon race in Holland (he won). And earlier this year, with the sponsorship of the Ford Motor Co., he piloted a hot-air balloon from Los Angeles to Jacksonville in 18 days, handily beating an old transcontinental record of 33 days set four years ago by publisher Malcolm Forbes.
All of which makes Karl Thomas sound like a compulsive thrill seeker. He shrugs off any notion that he's some kind of superman—or some kind of nut either. "I want people to say, 'That Karl Thomas, he's worked himself into great adventures. But he's nobody special. Maybe I can do that too.' "
True adventurers always seem to have trouble explaining why they do it, and Thomas is no exception. But, characteristically, he does not shrink from trying. A part of the answer lies in his driving competitiveness. "Whatever it is, if I consider it a challenge I want to win. I immediately want to do it better than anyone else. If I were suddenly crippled," he muses, "I'd go after Bobby Fischer in chess, thinking, sure I can do that.
"In America, people tend to live vicariously through other people's adventures. To get their hearts beating a little faster, they watch Kojak toughing through another murder case or hope that the home team scores seven points in the last minute. But I'm not here just to suffer through an existence. I want to experience everything firsthand, as much as I can in the time I have."
By "adventure," Thomas does not necessarily mean great feats of derring-do. "It's a relative thing," he says. "The person who wanders out of his own backyard for the first time is experiencing, I think, the same thrill as a traveler discovering a new country. Adventure is anything new to you."
His definition of course applies to himself. Growing up in small towns in Germany, Karl was such a fearless, insatiably curious toddler that his parents tethered him in the yard with a clothesline and dog harness. He always slipped free. "They could never keep me in the neighborhood. I'd just follow roads, wondering what's over there, what's next?" He was, he recalls, "often spanked memorably."
Karl's father worked at various times as a circus electrician (where he met
Karl's mother, a dancer), a government employee, a Luftwaffe combat pilot, an automobile repairman, a vacuum cleaner salesman. "My father detested authority figures, most of whom he found were idiots. He taught me the most valuable thing we have in life is our independence," Thomas says.
In practical translation, that meant a vagabond existence that kept the Thomas family moving from here to there in Germany, France, Canada and the east and west coasts of the U.S. (the elder Thomas now runs a plantation in Haiti). Along the way, young Karl learned the lessons of survival, sometimes operating like a junior con artist. He smuggled cigarettes in postwar Europe, hustled secondhand sneakers in Canada. By the time he was 14 he was in Florida living on a 38-foot boat. He caught live sharks for a local seaquarium and taught sailing. ("It was my introduction to dating. I'd take a girl out on the boat, tell her the water was full of sharks and try for a kiss.")
In a lengthening testament to over-achievement, he got his private pilot's license at 17, became a commercial pilot at 18 and obtained an airline transport rating at 21, then flew as a bush pilot in Alaska. Thomas went off to study psychology at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., but found time from the classroom to finish sixth in his first national balloon competition and to thrust his way into the finals of the national fencing matches.
After earning his first psychology degree, Karl typically charged through a two-and-a-half-year master's program in one year. Then he had second thoughts. "I'd just spent 10 grand of my money to get these degrees and I'm thinking, 'What can I do with them? Nothing.' That's what motivated me to go into my own business."
Before long Thomas was involved with four small airports and two flying services, which he claims grossed $1 million his second year. But, always restless and changeable, his business interests appear to be branching out in several directions at once. At present he is a vice-president of the Aspen Steel Co. of Troy, owned by his friend Paul Johnson.
Karl Thomas' aggressive style turns some people off, attracts others and befuddles practically everybody. "My wife calls him a walking fiasco," a close friend commented, "because something unusual always happens when he's around." Even Thomas' wife, Michele, 25, admits her husband's frenetic pace leaves her breathless. "Karl's always devising new challenges, so our life is very disjointed," she says. "We never know what we're doing, day to day."
Michele first met Thomas at her father's restaurant in Troy. They were married a year ago. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Michele is now a medical technologist at Detroit's William Beaumont Hospital. Her interests lean toward cancer research and microbiology, and though she is eager "to get more personally involved in Karl's quests," she concedes she has doubts. "In his mind, the chances he takes are worth it, but in mine, I don't know."
Thomas insists he's not into adventuring for fame or profit. "My goal is to spend as little time as possible working for money and as much time as I can for my life's important things." (Thomas and his wife live in a "very average" six-room apartment in Troy.) He acknowledges, however, that his adventures are getting increasingly expensive. The balloon rig for his Atlantic flight cost about $150,000, and only the gondola was salvaged. None of it was insured. "So I've got to find ways to make each adventure pay for the next one. The fame is only a steppingstone to financing. Otherwise, it's meaningless to me."
These days Thomas has been joined by his younger brother, George, 25, a nautical engineer, in working on a revolutionary new boat. Gnawing on a pen ("I bite pens. Lately I've developed a real relish for red plastic ones"), Thomas happily unrolls a sketch of the vessel and exults: "Sometime this fall we're going to contribute a new concept in sailboat racing—a radically new design—and the hell with international ocean-racing regulations."
For Karl Thomas there's always another challenge. "I've always enjoyed the guy in the circus with the plates and poles. He gets one plate spinning, then another and another. If the first one starts to wobble he goes back and spins it again.
"Some people spend their whole lives just working the one plate. I'd like to have 25, 30 plates going—as many as I can. Once in a while I'll drop and break a plate. But what the hell," Thomas says, "at least I've tried."