Balloonfest '86

Out on Lake Erie, search crews scanning for two missing fishermen suddenly found the horizon filled with the same plastic orbs they were trying not to mistake for human heads. ^[1]

Balloonfest ’86 was supposed to be the day Cleveland floated its troubles away. Instead, it became a cautionary tale about how quickly a “harmless” stunt can spin into chaos. ^[1][2][3]

A Record-Breaking Idea

Building a Machine to Launch the Sky

Making that vision real meant turning a public plaza into a temporary balloon factory. In the southwest quadrant of Cleveland’s Public Square, workers erected a rectangular structure measuring 250 by 150 feet and three stories tall. ^[1] It was covered with a one-piece woven mesh net designed to hold a sea of balloons until the moment of release. ^[1]

Holowach later said the team had to design a structure big enough to fill the square and sturdy enough to withstand 90-mile-per-hour winds to meet building codes. ^[3] He also said the one-piece net was fabricated by a Southern California company known for building cargo nets for the Space Shuttle. ^[3]

Inside that giant netted cage, about 2,500 volunteers—largely high school students—spent hours filling balloons. ^[1][4] They were paid not in cash but in free T‑shirts. ^[1] The work was relentless: balloon after balloon, attached to helium tanks, knotted, and left to bob beneath the net. ^[4]

The fundraiser itself was baked into the balloons. Children sold sponsorships at a rate of one dollar for every two balloons, with proceeds going to United Way. ^[1] Holowach later described kids selling the sponsorships in schools at “two for a dollar” to raise money for the charity. ^[3]

The original goal was staggering: two million balloons. ^[1][3] As the date approached, organizers scaled back—but only slightly. Holowach said they stopped after more than 1.4 million. ^[3]

The Release: Cleveland’s Big Moment

When the Balloons Came Back Down

The weather did not cooperate. The newly released balloons collided with a front of cool air and rain sweeping into the region. ^[1][2] Instead of continuing steadily upward, they hit the front, cooled, and began dropping back toward the ground while still fully inflated. ^[1]

Within a short time, the balloons that had been meant to float away were drifting back over Cleveland and out over Lake Erie. ^[1][4] They didn’t vanish; they landed.

The descending mass clogged land and waterways across Northeast Ohio. ^[1][4] Balloons blanketed lawns, trees, and roads. In the days that followed, reports described balloons washing ashore all the way to the Canadian side of Lake Erie, where they created a visible layer of trash along the waterline. ^[1][4]

At Burke Lakefront Airport, just east of downtown, balloons landing on the grounds forced officials to shut down a runway for about half an hour. ^[1] Drivers reported traffic collisions as people swerved to avoid low-flying balloons or turned their eyes upward instead of watching the road. ^[1]

The stunt that had aimed to present Cleveland as whimsical and forward-looking was already starting to look reckless.

Two Fishermen Missing on Lake Erie

Even before the first balloon left Public Square, there was another, far quieter story unfolding on Lake Erie.

On September 26—one day before Balloonfest—two men, Raymond Broderick and Bernard Sulzer, went out fishing on the lake in a 16-foot boat. ^[1] They did not return home. On the day of the balloon release, their families reported them missing. ^[1]

Some later publications would identify Sulzer by a different name—“Skip Sullivan”—a discrepancy that has lingered in retellings of the case. ^[1]

A Search in a Sea of Balloons

As Balloonfest’s cloud of latex drifted over Lake Erie, the same visual spectacle that had thrilled downtown crowds turned into a nightmare for search crews. ^[1]

A Coast Guard helicopter crew reported having difficulties reaching the search area as balloons landed in the lake. ^[1] On the water, a Coast Guard boat crew tried to spot the missing fishermen but found the view confounded by thousands of colored spheres bobbing on the waves. ^[1]

Guard officials said that balloons in the water made it impossible to see whether anyone was in the lake. ^[1] The event has been widely described as interfering with the Coast Guard’s efforts to find the two boaters. ^[1][3]

On September 29, 1986, two days after the release, the Coast Guard suspended its search for Broderick and Sulzer. ^[1] The fishermen’s bodies subsequently washed ashore. ^[1]

In later coverage, some outlets reported that the men’s boat had overturned and that the mass of balloons made it impossible for helicopters to locate the vessel. ^[3] Whatever the exact sequence of events, the outcome was clear: two men were dead, and Balloonfest loomed heavily over how the public understood their fate. ^[1][3]

Decades later, the question of causation would be revisited. In a 2024 interview, Roger Rice, Search and Rescue Program Manager for the Coast Guard’s Ninth District, stated that “Balloonfest did not have anything to do with the unfortunate deaths of both these men.” ^[1] His comments underlined a tension that has lingered around the story: between the documented, immediate interference with the search and the official position that the stunt did not directly cause the fishermen’s deaths. ^[1]

Lawsuits and Blame

In the aftermath of Balloonfest ’86, the problems went far beyond bad publicity. United Way and its collaborators found themselves facing lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in damages. ^[1]

The wife of one of the fishermen filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the United Way of Cleveland and the company that organized the balloon release, seeking $3.2 million. ^[1] That suit later settled on undisclosed terms. ^[1]

Other claims surfaced as well. In Geauga County, east of Cleveland, balloons reportedly landed on a pasture and spooked Arabian horses owned by a woman named Louise Nowakowski. ^[1] She alleged that the animals suffered permanent injuries and sued United Way for $100,000 in damages. ^[1] That case, too, was settled without public disclosure of the terms. ^[1]

Behind the scenes, the fundraiser itself had gone badly off plan. Cost overruns meant the event actually lost money, leaving United Way with a net financial loss instead of the windfall it had anticipated. ^[1]

A stunt meant to showcase the organization’s competence and good works had instead led to environmental damage, disrupted transportation, accusations of fatal interference with a rescue mission, and a tangle of legal settlements. ^[1]

From World Record to Warning

For a time, the sheer scale of Balloonfest overshadowed the controversy. The 1988 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records recognized the event as the world record for the “largest ever mass balloon release,” crediting it with 1,429,643 balloons. ^[1] Guinness has since stopped measuring balloon releases altogether. ^[1]

Years later, filmmakers and journalists would return to the footage and the fallout. In 2017, Nathan Truesdell released a short documentary titled Balloonfest, which used archival video to explore the event and its consequences. ^[1] An editor at The Plain Dealer noted that after the documentary appeared, local reporting on Balloonfest became more negative, reflecting a shift in how the city viewed its balloon-filled past. ^[1]

The story went global again in 2025, when the BBC’s Witness History series revisited Balloonfest ’86. ^[2] The episode presented the 1986 launch as a world record attempt in Cleveland that had released around one and a half million balloons, described at the time as a dazzling publicity stunt. ^[2] Presenter Colm Flynn spoke with project manager Tom Holowach as the program framed Balloonfest as one of the most memorable days in Cleveland’s history “for all the right, and wrong reasons.” ^[2]

The Legacy of Balloonfest ’86