As you can imagine, Sid’s friends have some great stories to tell, and as Sid sometimes put it, “some of them are true.” Here are some about Sid, the balloonist and the man, that his friends and family shared with us: gate to let the Budweiser balloon out of what was, it turned out, the Coors plant. Also, in 1980 following a change in the command structure of Iran, a group of militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and took about 70 employees and delegates hostage. The US wanted them back, of course. Sid contracted with the US Army for some balloon training for one of the rescue YNT scenarios that they envisioned. Sid put his Operations ON FL T guy, Jim, in charge of the training. The trainees, Ron, AL W Van and Jeff, we’ll call them, practiced assembling, inflating and taking-off within 5 minutes without an BILL Y inflator. They used a variety of balloons for the initial O B training and trashed 3-4 balloons in the process. T Towards the end of the training, they were using a PHO larger, higher capacity black balloon (to lower their visibility) that had been commissioned by the Army. Jim Ahern, Sid Cutter, and Paul Woessner, front, in their They were doing a no-lights training flight. Pilot World Balloon orange uniforms Jim and two of the special ops “Delta Boys” as they also was unscathed by the fall. Jim rode the deflating balloon, now in contact with the power lines, down to the ground and somehow also managed to escape electrocution or injury. Much of the west side of town lost power and rumor has it that for a time power was out all the way up into Colorado. This was one of the strategies that the Army explored for retrieving the Iran hostages, and somehow this adventure never made the news cycle. Investigations were initiated by insurance companies and others (?), but never seemed to gain traction. The recovery plan, should OIS this operation have ever gone into play, involved a JE helium balloon attached to the top of the escape DEBER balloon by a very long, strong cable. A specially UL equipped C-130 cargo aircraft with a “skyhook” A P was to snare the cable and haul the balloon and its Y O B passengers to safety. Can you say, James Bond and T PHO his lady Domino in Ian Fleming’s Thunderball? As Operations Mgr., Jim got to choose the branding A great love story – Sid and Jewel Cutter for World Balloon Corp uniforms. Sid was fond of the color blue, but, after considerable discussion, were sometimes called, were essentially flying blind. and much to Sid’s dismay, Jim chose orange as the They knew there was a huge power line out there predominant color because of its high visibility. somewhere and were keeping their eyes peeled for it as they made an approach for landing on a very dark Paul Woessner, two-time hot-air balloon world night. Then, during a burn, they saw the reflection of champion, worked for Sid as Vice President of World the fire bouncing off of the power lines. They had been Balloon Corp. from 1975-1981. He was hired after he venting hot air to initiate the descent but one of the made the first crossing of Lake Michigan in a hot air trainees jumped out of the basket without warning, hit balloon. Paul told some of his Sid stories to Wally the ground, bounced and stood up as if nothing had Book. happened. After losing weight, the balloon started back up so Jim opened the emergency descent panel • One of Sid’s flights involved a contract with just as the other trainee unexpectedly bailed out. He, Sandia Labs on Kirtland Air Force Base to repair ® 44 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta