For hundreds of years, humans have longed to safely parachute from on high back to earth. The first recorded parachute jump occurred in France in 1783. Louis-Sebastien Lenormand climbed the 14-story tower at the Montpellier Observatory. As a crowd of onlookers watched in awe, he held a 14-foot wide umbrella over his head, leapt out into the air, and parachuted successfully back to earth . His goal? To provide people with an object that could act as a portable fire escape, allowing them to jump from a high building in case of a fire. Think of the courage it took to leap into space with only an umbrella to hold you up! Yikes!
“Conquering Fears”
There are two things that really frighten me – snakes and heights. I would NEVER choose to write a book about snakes, but the first picture book of mine to be published in October 2023 will be all about heights.
TINY JUMPER tells the story of a very small mill girl who longed to escape the drudgery and low pay of her occupation. Georgia Ann, nicknamed “Tiny” on the day she was born weighing only three pounds, would climb to the top of a very tall tree after working a 12-hour day and watch the abandon, the freedom, the joy of the birds who flew above her.
In 1907, at the North Carolina State Fair, Tiny watched a huge smokey balloon rise from the fairgrounds with a man dangling under it from a trapeze. Right before the balloon collapsed, the man cut away from the balloon and slowly drifted back to the earth safely, thanks to a parachute.
“Aha!” Tiny thought, seeing her way to rise up into the air. She sought out Charles Broadwick and convinced him that a person as small as she could climb higher in the balloon and attract crowds wanting to see a girl attempt such a dangerous act. “I’m brave. Very brave,” she said when he questioned her daring to do what he did. Tiny joined Charles Broadwick’s famous aeronauts and traveled all over the country with them. She soon became known as the most daring aviatrice!
What’s so daring about a hot air balloon and a parachute, you may ask, considering that today many people ride in hot air balloons and others sky dive from great heights.
I’m sure I know how you picture a hot air balloon - a basket at the bottom with a burner fueled by propane gas to produce the hot air that will cause the balloon to rise and stay up in the air.
But those are not the type of hot air balloons used in 1908-1913 when Tiny was actively jumping from them. A “smokey” depended upon the hot air produced from an oil-burning fire in a ditch dug into the ground. The balloon apparatus was stretched across the ditch and slowly filled with the hot and very smoky air. Once completely filled, the anchors holding the balloon to the ground, were pulled away, and the 97-foot-tall balloon lifted, sometimes as high as 2,000 feet. There was no basket at the bottom of the balloon; no propane gas to keep the balloon filled with hot air; no way to steer the balloon, leaving it to the uncertainties of winds from all directions. When the air inside the smokey completely cooled, the balloon collapsed, and plummeted to earth.
I admire Tiny Broadwick to the depths of my heart and mind – her courage, her tenacity, her adventuresome spirit, and most importantly, her joy in doing the thing that thrilled her. Did writing her story help me conquer my fear of heights? Ha! Would I ever soar to 2,000 feet inside a hot, smoke-filled balloon? Haha!! Would I ever cut myself away from it and hope my parachute fills with life-saving air? Hahaha!!! But no matter my own fears, I am thrilled to write the story of someone who found those things to be the absolute keys to life-fulfilling happiness.