Mar 20, 2008 11:43 pm US/Central
Chicago Adventurer Steve Fossett Remembered
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Adventurer Steve Fossett (File)
AP
Steve Fossett made his fortune as a trader in Chicago and made history with his achievements. CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine was a close friend. Here is his chronicle of the life and legacy of man who aimed ever higher. Steve Fossett and I first met in 1995 in a wheat field in western Canada.
He'd just completed a record-breaking hot air balloon flight across the Pacific.
We knew he was a LaSalle Street financial whiz with an appetite for adventure, but had no inkling we'd be watching as he circled the globe time and again for the next decade.
Fossett sought out and set records one by one, more than a hundred of them in balloons, airplanes, gliders and sailboats. He competed in the Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska, swam the English Channel and climbed the world's highest mountains.
The one thing most of his adventures had in common was danger. The Global Flyer he piloted non-stop around the world was little more than a flying fuel tank.
But he wasn't a daredevil or a thrill-seeker.
"I'm not in this for the thrills," Fossett said. "I'm in it for the accomplishments."
He always tried to minimize risk, but had many a brush with death. In 1998 his balloon was ripped apart by storms off Australia, and he realized the capsule was plunging 29,000 feet toward the South Coral Sea.
"I actually said out loud, 'I'm going to die,'" he said then.
He was knocked unconscious, but survived and was rescued several hours later.
Back home, his wife, Peggy, was anxiously awaiting word.
"When I called her after I'd been rescued, she said 'I hope now you won't do this anymore,'" Fossett said Peggy told him.
Asked if there is anything he has wanted to do that she would not let him, Peggy Fossett said, "You don't tell him no; he does what he wants to do."
And he was nearly always successful, though it did take him six tries to fly a hot air balloon around the world. His second attempt ended with his capsule bouncing along a remote Indian River valley, then slamming into a tree.
But setbacks never seemed to get him down, or at least not for long. Nor did successes seem to completely satisfy him.
Asked if he could keep raising the bar higher and higher he said, "I don't know. I better not, it might be too high at some point…
That's a danger. The adventures I've undertaken have been grander in scale than they were earlier. There's a danger that I could overreach."
His balloon capsule and Global Flyer are now on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, where growing up Fossett was inspired by the pioneers of aviation history and dreamed of adventures.
He died having joined that elite group. We'll remember his adventures and his spirit.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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