Before the Big Apple, there had been the big balloon.
The big, big, big balloon.
Fully inflated, it stood as high as a 15-story building — it’s the largest balloon ever manufactured in the United States — and, as someone with some math skills and imagination figured out, it could hold 573,000 basketballs inside it.
Ten days ago, Connor — the founder and managing partner of The Connor Group, his nationally recognized real estate investment firm; a well-known local philanthropist; and a longtime sports adventurist who’d flown to the International Space Station and dived to the deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean in the last two years — was in the small basket of that balloon with four current and former U.S Air Force Special Tactics pararescuemen as they ascended to a height of 38,067 feet.
That put them higher than commercial flights Connor would have taken from NYC back to Dayton.
And that’s when the quintet — whose quest was called the Alpha 5 Project — positioned themselves onto the ledge of the basket and then jumped out into the dead air, some 7.2 miles above the desert near Roswell, New Mexico.
They had been pre-breathing oxygen for 90 minutes before the attempt to combat the dearth of O2 at such heights, a situation that can cause a lack of consciousness from hypoxia.
Still using pressurized equipment to breathe and with the temperature around them near minus 50 degrees, they began a world record effort as they plummeted back to Earth — freefalling like in one of those dramatic scenes in a James Bond or Mission Impossible movie — as they reached speeds of nearly 190 mph.
Asked what that felt like, Connor thought for a couple seconds, trying to put the adrenaline rush, the spectacle, and the wonderment into words:
“Imagine getting to the top floor of the Empire State Building and stepping through the elevator door, but there’s no elevator (car) and instantly you’re just plummeting straight down the shaft with no resistance.”
Eventually, he and the four others were able to link arms and make a human circle. They held the formation for 11 seconds before breaking apart and finally deploying their canopies and landing in a stacked formation less than 25 meters apart, but some 14 miles from where they’d jumped.
A Guinness World Records observer in attendance validated their jump, which set multiple world records.
The one Connor focused on most was that it was the highest altitude from which anyone completed a HALO (High Altitude, Low Opening) jump with a team formation.
After he landed in the desert, he said he was ‘relieved … and thrilled.”
His freefall from 38,000 feet to his canopy release at 4,000 feet took just two minutes and 10 seconds.
And that’s why this venture stood out from both his historic 17-day trip to the International Space Station in April of 2022 — a mission he piloted and which was the first full-private effort to the ISS — and his record-breaking dives in a submersible to 35,856 feet in the Mariana Trench some 200 miles from Guam in May of 2021.
It had taken a day to fly to the space station and it took four hours to reach the ocean floor.
“This was a lot different,” Connor said. “It was shorter and MUCH more intense.”
The other thing — the most important thing, the one that makes this effort so noteworthy, he said — is the purpose behind it.
He and the team are hoping to raise $1 million for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation (SOWF), a 501(3)c charitable group that provides full educations — “cradle to career (preschool through college)” Connor said — for surviving children of special operations forces lost in the line of duty, as well as children of all Medal of Honor recipients.
That’s why he did the media blitz in New York — appearing on Fox & Friends, doing a Sirius radio interview, and stopping by Newsmax — after the jump.
He’s making people aware of the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, while also reminding them of the sacrifice made by special forces and their families.
SOWF was founded in 1980 after eight servicemen — five from the Air Force and three Marines — were killed during a daring attempt to rescue 52 American hostages in Iran. During the rescue, a dust storm enveloped a helicopter which collided with an MC-130 and then exploded.
The eight who perished left behind 17 children.
Other members made a battlefield promise to educate the kids who had lost their dads that day and from that the Foundation was born. Today, over 1,200 children have received an education through those efforts.
“I don’t believe that a lot of Americans really understand just what kind of sacrifices and dedication these guys have made,” Connor said.
“Most of them have been in the military for 20-plus years and they don’t get paid a lot. And yet, on a moment’s notice, they put their lives at risk for the rest of us. They put themselves in harm’s way in the most difficult and challenging circumstances.”
Connor said one of the guys he jumped with had deployed seven times another “12 to 14 times.”
“And they do it, almost to a person, because they care about America and protecting Americans,” he said. “I think they are an absolutely remarkable, remarkable group.”
To find out more about the Special Operations Warrior Foundation or donate, you can go to its website — www.specialops.org — or call, toll free, 877-337-7693.
‘Acceptable risk’
HALO jumps were first developed in the 1960s for the military as a way of delivering personnel, equipment, and supplies. To minimize risk, transport aircraft fly at a high altitude above surface-to-air missile engagement levels while in enemy skies.
Among the many missions, clandestine special forces drops were used to get into Laos during the Vietnam War, into Afghanistan right after the 9/11 attacks and into Somalia to free hostages taken by pirates.
Although he’d skydived a few times three decades ago, Connor said he knew little about pararescue specialists until he was training for the AX-1 mission to space and met a group called Operator Solutions, a leading provider of specialized search and rescue operations for commercial spaceflight and the private sector.
As he told me then: “God forbid something went wrong and we had to issue a deorbit and ended up with what NASA called an unsupported landing. We could end up off the coast of Africa and these guys would have been the ones who came and got us.”
During their training, he volunteered to float in a mock capsule, 10 miles out in the ocean off the coast of Florida.
“These guys came over in a C-130, bailed out the back with their equipment and they came to us,” he said. “Next thing I know, I’m in a gurney and being lifted 100 feet in the air to a waiting helicopter.
“Right then, I remember thinking: ‘These guys really know what they’re doing!’”
A day after his return from space, Connor was at a gathering and met CMSgt. Brandon Daugherty, the CEO and Co-founder of Operator Solutions
“He asked me what was next, and I told him I’d always wanted to try one of those HALO jumps,” Connor said. “And he said, ‘We can train you and then go do it safely and successfully.’
“And that’s how the journey started.”
Daugherty assembled the team of expert jumpers — along with himself, there would be CMSgt. (Ret) Chris Lais; MSgt. (Ret) Jimmy Petrolia; and MSgt. Rob Dieguez — and Connor funded expenses related to training and executing the attempt.
They began training last fall and did a jump from a plane at 26,500 feet. They thought it was a record, but later heard a group once had jumped from 33,000 feet, though it had not been certified and no judge was present.
Undaunted they set their sights on shattering the record and, to do so, Connor contacted a company in Ann Arbor, Michigan — Cameron Balloons — to build the mammoth hot air balloon.
He said his group did over 90 training jumps in Florida, California, New Mexico and even some in Middletown.
They took the new balloon up just three times before their world record effort. Once they didn’t jump at all and the other two times, they exited it from 26,000 feet and 30,000 feet.
When they finally launched on Sept. 28, they shared the balloon basket with pilot Shane Wallace and oxygen technician Tad Smith.
A support team of over 60 people — including doctors, riggers, logistics experts, a chase team, biometric personnel, meteorologists, and communications experts — was on the ground.
“We did it at dawn and the sun was coming up and it was so quiet,” Connor said. “The view at 38,000 feet was breathtaking. I think you could see the whole state of New Mexico.”
That view helps provide one of his answers when people ask about his sense of adventure and derring-do — whether it was in the early days when he was racing cars and planes, climbing the world’s highest mountains and whitewater rafting around the globe, or now, with his space mission, ocean dives and HALO jump:
“Nothing in life is truly worthwhile unless you take risks. Not crazy risk, but acceptable risk.”
As he told me once before: “I think too many people set too many imposed limitations on themselves. They spend too much time talking about what they can’t do versus maybe what they could do.”
What’s next?
As Connor sat there talking to me the other day, I mentioned the seven colorful bracelets he wore in his left wrist.
He said they were given to him by friends and family, and he said they were for luck.
“I’m kind of superstitious,” he smiled “So I wore them when I jumped.” He fingered one of them with his right hand.
He said it had been given to him by his 8-year-old granddaughter, Adele, who is a third grader in Yellow Springs.
She calls him “Pops” and she sounds like a Mini-Me version of him.
“She was in the indoor wind tunnel with me when she was 5 years old,” he said proudly. “We went ziplining in Columbus and she’s been climbing at the Urban Krag in the Oregon District multiple times.
“And she and I went to Kings Island and rode all the big roller coasters together.”
Speaking of up and down rides — after going from the ocean depths to the space station to a 190-mph plummet from 38,000 feet — what’s next?
He mentioned The Greater Dayton School he launched — a highly acclaimed private venture that exclusively teaches underserved children — that’s in temporary quarters on South Wilkinson Street and will move into its new building at Deeds Point around Christmas.
“But that’s not what’s really important,” Connor stressed. “That’s just a building. What is important is what’s already going on inside the four walls. It’s about the teachers, the students, the parents and the leadership.
“There’s been nothing short of incredible results. We set really high expectations, and the kids are exceeding them.
“Of all the various pursuits I’ve done over the last decade, if you asked me what’s most important, it’s The Greater Dayton School and all the potential it holds, not only for kids in Dayton, but across the U.S.”
And beyond that does he have something else in the works?
He started to smile and nodded:
“I do!”
Of yeah, what is it?
“I can’t tell you.”
C’mon, fess up.
“All I can say is that it will be something with land, sea or air,” he shrugged. “There’ll be a challenge to it and a purpose. It should be interesting.”
It always is.
Credit: Alex Nicks
Credit: Alex Nicks
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