Notable pilots

Derek Howard

When Derek was a student at the University of Texas, he wanted a hot air balloon. He could not find any, although he heard there might be a couple of balloons in Texas. It was 1970. Derek was not quite sure what they even looked like. He and his friend Randy Rogers telephoned all over the country looking to purchase a hot air balloon. They also called Goodyear about buying helium bags and gondolas. Finally, someone referred them to Raven Industries in South Dakota. With $6000 they purchased a Raven S-50A with all the equipment, including a trailer. 

Matt Wiederkehr of St. Paul, Minnesota was referred to them for training. They could only afford lessons for one. Randy won the coin flip and would take lessons and then train Derek. Only eight hours were required to get a commercial license and become an instructor. Like most student balloon pilots in those days, Derek had to give the examiner a five-minute lesson on hot air ballooning before being given a check ride.

Derek said he began instructing others the same day he received his license. He was learning by “seat of the pants” flying as he was teaching others. Derek started Southwestern Balloon School in Austin. The famed cartoonist Gilbert Shelton even designed his first advertising. He trained around twenty students from as far away as California and Iowa. Not all of them bought balloons, but soon there were six balloons in Texas. Some of Derek’s students were Bill Murtorff, Portis Wooley, Ray Gallagher and Jack Jewett. 

Derek told me his favorite student was Bill Murtorff. At that time Murtorff ran a surfboard shop in Corpus Christi until Hurricane Celia wiped him out (Bill had long white hair and a beard back then, too). Bill would drive from Corpus to Austin for lessons. After all, Derek was the only pilot around who could train him. Derek said that Bill was very enthusiastic about ballooning. Murtorff might arrive at Derek’s door at 5:00 in the morning and drive right back if the weather was bad. He had about a dozen dry-runs but never complained. 

Bill’s version, “I had made the trip from my home in Corpus Christi to meet with Derek in Austin at least a dozen times. Sometimes I stayed for days waiting for the rain to stop, the wind to drop or the fog to lift. Sometimes I just turned around and returned home. It was a 200-mile trip and today I have no sympathy when people tell me about the long drive across Houston.”  

Murtorff probably got half of his instruction tethered in parking lots while Derek was making money from a car dealer or shopping center. 

A few weeks after getting his license, Derek realized the potential of making money with a hot air balloon. He and Randy went to Minneapolis intending to fly a sign over the U.S. Golf tournament and getting paid for it. They went to several advertising agencies in Minneapolis but most had never heard of such an idea. Finally, they convinced Litton Industries that they would get national television coverage. Litton paid them $1000 to fly one flight over the golf tournament. This was a novel idea for all of them. After all, in 1970 there were only a dozen balloons in the National Hot Air Balloon Championships. Derek and Randy were just college students who felt they could get anything done and to hell with any limitations. 

The next step was to get ABC’s Wide World of Sports cameraman in the balloon with them. This would ensure national television coverage for Litton. At the Hazeltine Golf Course where ABC had its mobile studios, they went straight to the top man, Chuck Howard, the producer of Wide World of Sports. Derek told him they were going to fly a hot air balloon over the golf course and would like to take a cameraman with them. The producer looked at them and said, “You’re not flying across anywhere with anything, and if you do, we will sue your ass.” They left but never told Litton of the incident. 

Derek and his crew waited until the championship round began and laid out the balloon at the edge of the golf course. The timing was critical to be over the green exactly as the leading champion, Tony Jacklin, was putting out. If everyone was looking at a balloon flying over at 200 feet, how could they keep the cameras off the balloon? So just before Jacklin putted on the championship round, the balloon flew overhead and he and everyone else looked up. The Wide World of Sports cameras panned up, and there was the balloon with the Litton microwave ovens sign flying overhead. They were on national television and Litton was ecstatic. No one sued them, after all. That was the start of Derek’s commercial ballooning. 

Derek Howard & Randy Rogers launching a balloon in about 1970. (No audio)

Another exciting flight was at Stone Mountain, Georgia. They took off on a hot summer afternoon knowing nothing about the danger of thermal air currents. The giant rock of granite they were flying over was producing massive thermal activity. As they flew over the mountain, their forward progress stopped. They went up to 5000 feet trying to get out of the thermal’s hold. Derek said they were like the beach ball floating over the vacuum cleaner at Sears. Eventually, the balloon ran out of fuel and landed on top of Stone Mountain. There were sheer drop-offs on each side; the only way down was by cable car. News media from as far away as Atlanta arrived to cover the event. The cable car system had to be temporarily closed to the public so the balloon could be loaded onto it and carried down. 

Derek put on the first hot air balloon race in Texas. In 1972 he invited ten balloons to a race at Bird’s Nest Airport in Manor, Texas near Austin. Also that year he made a short movie called Ballooning Over LBJ Country in which he flew over all the Highland Lakes. 

His partnership with Randy Rogers ended when Randy left for medical school. Derek Howard retired from ballooning in 1980. Derek is now a lawyer in Austin and married to Donna Howard, a member of the Texas House of Representatives. 

Bill Murtorff passed away in 1998 at 63 years old.

Derek passed away in