The blimp takes off with passengers and heads for New York.

- And they are clearly identified flying objects.

- And I think we can get a beautiful view of a Jackie Stewart from the blimp today.

- As everyone knows, blimps are a little different from airplanes.

- You know, I wonder why the blimp world and fans of it, like myself, are just so into it.

I think it all just comes back to its so unusual.

- They’re this strange floating entity up in the sky.

They bob a little bit like a fish.

- Ever since I saw, I was, like, hooked on it.

You know, everytime it came to my town, I just wanted to see it.

- The only way I can describe it is really pure joy.

- We joke around that everyone is a kid when they get near the blimp.

They're just different ages.

Whether they're 2 or they're 99.

I've never seen somebody not smiling and just full of joy if they're riding on the airship or even just walking around it asking questions or taking a tour.

Really, it brings out the inner childhood of everybody.

- One of the things I find really interesting about the Goodyear Blimp is why a tire company has a blimp.

What is it about this campaign, this entity that has generated so much goodwill, so many conversations around the brand.

- We're asked often why a tire company has blimps and our easy answers that blimps are cool.

Why would we not have a blimp?

But the actual answer is a little more complicated than that.

And to answer that, really, we have to look back almost a hundred years.

I've been interested in the blimp for a long time.

I didn't expect it to become a career, but I actually have pictures of me when I was seven years old looking in the window of what became the blimp that I learned to fly on almost 25 years later.

I was actually a lawn business owner when I was working my way through college, made some extra money to help pay for flight school.

One of the accounts was at the hangar here where the airship is kept in Akron.

What that bought for me was a foot in the door to get to meet some of the pilots at the time, got to know some of the crew at the time, and really got interested in the airship as possibly a career or at least something cool that I could be a little piece of.

I used to be called grasshopper because I was out here mowing grass, and the crew would see me out there every day.

And now I'm running the organization that was watching me literally cut grass at the facility where the airships are kept.

- For more than a century.

The Goodyear blimp has been a symbol of wonder, mystery, delight and nostalgia.

This lighter than air marvel has captivated hearts all over the world.

And its rich history has made it a household name.

- We get asked a lot why it's called a blimp.

The term blimp, has some mystery in its origin as well.

And the fun story to tell is that when the Navy first brought airships on as tools to use, one of the officers that was in charge of the program came up and flicked the blimp with his finger, and it made a blimp sound.

And so he said, oh, blimp.

And then ever since, it's been called a blimp.

Probably the more true story would be that it was a B-class airship and it was a limp type airship because it had no internal structure.

The B, then you put them together and it was the blimp.

- The Goodyear Blimp that we're in right now is not technically a blimp.

It is a semi-rigid airship.

But I think if you see it in the sky, people are going to point to it and call it a blimp.

The broad category.

The umbrella category is dirigible.

These are steerable, lighter than aircrafts.

But underneath that you have blimps and semi-rigid airships.

So what we're in right now is a semi-rigid airship.

That means that there is an internal structure that will help to give that balloon its shape.

On the other hand, a true blimp can be deflated all the way down.

So something like the smaller advertising blimps you see nowadays, those are true blimps.

And the original Goodyear blimps were also true blimps.

You could deflate them all the way down, but now all of the Wingfoot Fleet is a semi-rigid airship.

- Regardless of where the name comes from, airships have been around since 1852 when Henri Giffard created the first steerable powered dirigible in Paris.

For Goodyear, experiments and lighter than air began nearly 60 years later in the heart of America.

- The Goodyear Blimp as we know it today was really a vision of our original chairman at Goodyear, P.W.

Litchfield.

And Paul Litchfield was a huge fan of aviation.

- He was a sailor.

He loved the ocean, loved the sailing boats.

So he looked at the airships as yachts, sailing yachts in the sky.

In the earlier days, really superseding the blimps themselves was balloons.

Goodyear made several balloons for races.

- Goodyear was interested in rubber.

And balloons at that point were essentially being made out of rubberized fabric, which is what Goodyear was producing.

- I always want to get back to the, why is Goodyear that involved in this and you know, not Ford or something like that.

That's primarily the fabric that was required, the rubberized materials to make tires.

In 1925 actually, the Litchfield Cup was invented by Paul Litchfield to further ballooning in America.

- What began as a balloon program quickly progressed into building airships for military use.

In 1970, Wingfoot Lake hangar outside of Akron, Ohio was constructed to house and maintain these ships.

Between 1917 and 1925, approximately 25 airships for the U.S.

Army and Navy were built at Wingfoot Lake.

And it was also used as a training facility for the first class of Navy airship pilots.

- The Goodyear engineers just went to work on producing American naval airships during World War One and Army airships too, military airships initially.

And they were used for things like cruising off shore looking for submarines or escorting convoys and that kind of thing.

And the Army use them just for a variety of purposes.

But when World War One was over, Goodyear had all that experience both with balloons and with airships at that point.

- In 1925, the first true Goodyear blimp was born, named Pilgrim.

It was the first commercial blimp to be filled with helium instead of hydrogen.

- It was the grandfather of the Goodyear airships as we know them today.

That airship had a lot of new innovation.

It was the very first helium filled airship.

We were able to put the the gondola or the passenger car actually flush on to the bottom of the envelope.

The passenger car was very small.

Only three people inside, including the pilot.

A lot of times one of the other people was a mechanic to kind of keep the motor running in the late teens and early 20s, the motors weren't super reliable back then but we could put a couple of passengers in there and actually fly this thing around.

Although it was a big step forward innovation, there were several things to come in the next 5 to 10 years after that.

- The idea that you could advertise in the sky, you know, you can't take that too lightly.

There weren't a lot of airplanes around.

There really was no concerted, large effort to put anything in the sky, like skywriting or whatever you might want to think of.

People are going to look up.

They're going to look up, and they're going to see it.

They're going to see the name on the side of the blimp.

So I think that was a pretty impressive move early on.

- Today, the Gondola of the Pilgrim is now part of the National Collection at the Smithsonian.

- We are in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museums.

Steven F. Udvar has the facility, which is sort of the nation’s hangar.

A lot of these aircraft are one of a kind.

To get into the national collection, they have to have some specific reason.

They have to have done something to represent something.

Goodyear Blimps are here because of what they represent to the American people.

I think they represent a good time, and people just delight in seeing them up in the sky.

I mean, they’re low and slow and big.

You know that aluminum color with the Goodyear on the side.

And, again, people have seen them at public events where they were having a good time.

Gosh, I mean, it deserves representation.

An iconic flying machine like the Goodyear blimp deserves to be in the Smithsonian, for heaven's sakes.

- Pilgrim also began a century long tradition of christening new airships.

Like Ships of the Sea, these ships of the sky were christened by a notable woman of the time.

- Paul Litchfield really envisioned them as his own personal form of transportation, sort of like a yacht on the water this would be a yacht of the sky.

And it's not called an airship for nothing because even now they fly very much like a boat flying in the sky.

Because of that, they decided that when we had a Goodyear Blimp and it was brought into the Goodyear fleet, it should be christened.

Just like a boat is christen.

One of the most well known versions of christening any craft, is by breaking a champagne bottle on the hull somewhere is what you're supposed to do.

Which then is a sign of good luck for that craft and a sign of prosperity in its life.

- Christening a blimp went on to become a prestigious rite of passage for more than 40 women since 1925.

Including aviator Amelia Earhart.

The first American woman in space, Dr.

Sally Ride.

Good Morning America host, Robin Roberts and businesswoman, philanthropist, and wife of one of the top NBA athletes in history, Savannah James.

- I have to say, I didn't realize at the time how big of a deal christening Wingfoot Two was.

Being listed as one of the women alongside the other women who have also christened the blimp.

I mean, it was an amazing experience.

It was an amazing honor.

I had the honor of seeing her off and christening her with the champagne bottle.

It was just a really cool experience.

I think the blimp means a lot to Akronites, our own national treasure along with some other ones that we have from Akron.

To see all of these major events all around the world and to see that the blimp is a part of those.

And to know that, you know, we're just from this little town in Ohio, and we could drive up the street and see these amazing monstrosities.

- After Pilgrim, the blimp program began to grow.

A second blimp, Puritan was built larger and could carry more weight than Pilgrim.

Puritan began a nearly 50 year tradition of naming the blimps after racing yachts that won the America's Cup.

With adventure and excitement in their hearts, the early engineers, crews, and pilots drove the blimp program forward, continuing to experiment with new ways to use the airships.

- Rescue men on each line.

Wow, get them!

- There's great pictures of some of the early airships landing in huge crowds of people at airports, helping people pull off stunts because that's what people did.

Hanging a trapeze from the bottom and having somebody hanging from it as you flew across it over a downtown area or waterskiing off to the back because the balloon could hover for a minute and then actually move like a boat, but be in the sky.

Getting out into the people and into the crowds was something that, that these folks did with some of these smaller airships and they were capable of doing that because the blimps were really small.

You know, we didn't have all of the same types of rules and things we have today, so if they landed into a crowd and the crowd helped to land them and hold them for a minute, that was just what they did.

So I can imagine that seeing the country with the lack of technology and forecasting and all of the other things that we really lean into now, not having that and then taking barnstorming to a whole other level by doing it in an airship would have been pretty crazy.

- By the 1930s, a whole fleet of blimps had taken to the skies.

A new era of airships began with the addition of a lighted sign on the side of the blimp, Defender.

- The initial idea was that the blimps are actually really hard to see at night.

There's no color on them.

The lights are far away.

They almost look like a tower sitting still in the distance.

But we soon found out with that was that if we had the technology, or we could drive the technology forward enough to make the letters change, we could put kind of whatever we wanted on there, and sometimes we got brightness enough to be able to use it during the day.

But certainly during the night we could make messaging across, we could tell different stories.

They envisioned it as running it as almost like a ticker, where they could put information or data across the outside of the sign whenever and whatever they wanted to have.

- Other new technology and improved operational capabilities vastly grew the public's interest in airships from the late 1920s to the 1940s.

This era became coined the Golden Age of Airships.

- So, as often happens, technology was being driven on both sides of the ocean.

Goodyear wasn't the only one dealing in airships.

Zeppelin across the ocean also was dealing in airships.

They were really focused on airline style travel or luxury style travel boat style, but in the sky and at speeds that would allow you to cross the Atlantic for example, in days instead of weeks, like a boat would.

They were successful in this and especially when they got to Graf Zeppelin that made several transatlantic trips, but it was extremely exclusive travel.

Sometimes in today's dollars, it would be like spending more than a car or 30 or $40,000 for a ticket.

This airline style travel was also something that we were looking at kind of in a micro version here, and that's Paul Litchfield’s kind of original plan was to bring these things to the people, and he wanted these to be more an individual style form of travel, rather than an airline style form of travel.

He was sending the airships out on the road quite a bit, and they covered 40 plus states up and down both coasts as far into the mountainous terrain in the center of the United States as they could get.

But everywhere that they went, they just brought excitement to everyone that they touched, the people that they saw.

All this innovation, kind of golden age of airships would sort of come to an end just a few years later.

- In 1937, the era of airships would start to fade.

The Hindenburg burst into flames forever changing the way the public viewed airships.

Airplanes became faster and more accessible than airships.

- The honest truth is, the great airships existed at a particular time for a particular reason.

Airplanes in the 1930s were of limited range in carrying capacity.

And airships could do things that no airplane could do, even work as fast as airplanes.

They actually weren't as safe as airplanes, but they could do transcontinental journeys that airplanes couldn't do yet.

And that's why after the Hindenburg tragedy, that's why the giant airships disappeared.

Because airplanes now couldn't fly across oceans and continents.

So the real economic and military role that the giant airship had was gone.

They were replaced by airplanes.

- Still, the Goodyear Blimp continued to persist even as the United States was on the edge of war.

As the U.S.

entered World War Two, so did the blimps.

- When World War Two began, there was a military role for blimps again.

They really did have a job to do coastal patrols looking for submarines off the Atlantic and off the Pacific.

- Because of their ability to fly at low altitudes and speeds, blimps were ideal vessels for keeping watch over U.S.

Navy ships, spotting enemy submarines before they could attack.

- Goodyear and its PR airships really got pushed into the water right after Pearl Harbor, because we had one airship, one PR airship on the West Coast at the time, the resolute and the resolute and its crew were drafted into the Navy as a whole.

So the U.S.

Navy and the Allied forces and a lot of the supply chains that were going back and forth across the ocean were really struggling early in the war.

There was a lot of losses, a lot of surface ships that were lost, especially the U-boats, because the U-boats couldn't be seen by the boats that were sitting in the water.

But what we found was the airships gave a very unique view of the water.

And we knew that from before, because we had been all over the place with the airship.

So it fit right in that if an airship was next to a surface ship, and then a U-boat came up around the airship would know that and could radio back and help support that boat in defending itself.

- During the war, Goodyear built a total of 154 airships for the U.S.

Navy and escorted more than 89,000 ships without a single loss to enemy submarines while an airship was overhead.

- After the war, the world began to recover from World War Two, and so did Goodyear and its airship program.

As we got back into normal operations, we had the opportunity then to buy back some of the airships that we had sold to the Navy.

So we bought seven airships back for more assets.

Almost right away we put five of those back into services, PR airships.

So they got repainted, rebranded and sent on their way.

And because of all of the innovation that happened during the war and then that continued innovation postwar, which the country also saw, was very important to the airship operations team as we moved into our next big thing for the Goodyear blimps.

- So we're always experimenting on what we can do with the airship and ways we can be relatable to the public.

In 1955, we pioneered the very first aerial broadcast from the Goodyear Blimp over the Rose Parade.

Essentially, we just hung a giant studio camera out the side of the airship and used a microwave transmitter to get the signal back down to the ground.

We worked with NBC on that day to provide that live coverage that had never been done before.

So we started going to any event that was televised, and eventually that rolled into going to any big event that we could find.

Everybody says that if the blimp is there, you know it's a big event.

- Just a few years after the first aerial coverage event, the blimp made an appearance at the first ever Daytona 500.

And in 1967, the Goodyear Blimp Columbia broadcast Super Bowl I for CBS.

For the next 30 years, the blimp would become a fixture at the event, covering 24 out of the first 30 Super Bowls.

Since then, it has made appearances at some of the biggest events in sports and entertainment.

From the Olympics to the World Series, Indy 500, NBA finals, PGA Championships, College Football National Championship, and the Oscars.

Still today, the blimp continues to make appearances at big events.

- The Goodyear Blimp is iconic, especially at sports events.

I mean, this says this is huge, the blimp is here.

I first started using the blimp as a director in 1987 at the U.S.

Open Tennis Championships.

And it was really cool to be able to kind of show the breadth and scope of the tennis center and then zoom in to the match court where we were doing.

So we'll do some— I think we'll try to do some cool stuff from the, you know, the blimp.

All right?

Have a great show.

I would love to have the blimp on every show I do.

And I really mean that.

I grew up as a huge sports fan.

So I started noticing the Goodyear Blimp in the 60s when I was a kid.

And I've always kind of been a little bit enthralled by the blimp and seeing it at an event, because it's dynamic in so many ways, especially with NASCAR, especially on golf.

Because you're able to see things and to get a perspective that you would not be able to get with any other view.

- You're just like any other camera on the ground.

You're listening to the director, you're taking cues on on what to do according to what event you're covering.

So in NASCAR during the race, like they're coming to you live showing the action, so you're constantly engaged.

The last thing you want to do is screw up and then nobody sees who wins the race.

So a lot of pressure on that as far as making sure you're a steady shot.

- The blimp is an American tradition.

I mean, it really is.

In my eyes as far as sports culture, where there's a big event going on, there's the blimp and it really elevates it.

It really makes it even that much more of a special thing.

When I first started racing, I was in Daytona and my hotel room was on the beach, and I had the doors open because it was one of those nice days and I kept hearing this noise.

This noise, I was like, what the hell is that?

So I go outside and it's the Goodyear Blimp, and the wind's blowing this way and it's going that way.

And I think I looked at the Goodyear Blimp for three hours because it was fighting the wind.

I heard it and listened to it and saw it for a long time, and I'll never forget, I wonder what the guy in that thing is thinking right now?

- There's a couple of things that are synonymous with every major sporting event, and that is the classic flyover and that is the Goodyear Blimp being involved.

I think people are always excited to see the Goodyear Blimp, especially at games, you know, sporting events have really, that’s sort of the stamp that it's a major event, you see the blimp.

I think that the aerial coverage that the blimp can provide is just indelible.

Like the images that come out of the Goodyear Blimp with any major event are unparalleled.

And I'm sure there are people that have tried for years to sort of mirror that or copy that to some degree, and it's just impossible.

There's very few things, I think, in this world still anymore, where as soon as you see something, you sort of know what it means, you know what it represents and you know what it brings and that is hands down the Goodyear blimp.

And it doesn't matter the sport.

It doesn't matter what you're a fan of, when you see that blimp, you know it's big.

- So the 1960s was the next exciting period for the Goodyear Blimp.

And so now, Goodyear has been operating airships for 35, almost 40 years.

And they've come a long way.

And we really started to weave ourselves into the fabric of America.

So going to those big events and really getting into the public mindset that if the Goodyear Blimp is there, it's a really big event.

And that really carried us forward into the next era of driving that innovation.

Making sure that the blimp was really parts of these big events, wherever they were happening.

- By 1960, more than 90% of American households had a TV set, a 900% increase from just one decade earlier.

This shift in American culture and the blimps ability to provide aerial coverage springboard of the airship into the public eye, giving an exposure to millions more people than it previously reached by flying over towns across America.

- Kind of like in the early days where we were literally taking airships to crowds.

Now the crowds were kind of coming to you via this television platform and the aerial coverage that the airship was providing for folks.

Because of that, we needed to change our technology just a little.

So kind of another step forward in innovation for us.

The 1960s airships and the GZ-19 model specifically was built around the sign technology and the aerial coverage, the aerial TV piece of technology.

So at this time we had airships being built out of Akron, Ohio.

We had a base in Florida for a time in the Miami area, and we've been going back and forth between Ohio or even sometimes New York and Los Angeles for a long time now, since the very early airships.

So we opened a base in Spring, Texas, near Houston, which at the time was a big and growing city.

And also provided us the ability to come out of a home base within a few hundred nautical miles and reach all of those southwest events now.

We were really able to cover all of America at this point.

- 1969 would introduce the next generation of blimps, the GZ-20 model.

This would be the longest running blimp model soaring through the skies for over 40 years.

The GZ-20s were very physical.

It had the rudder pedals and a wheel and a throttle.

And not too much in the way of really, clever stuff.

Technically, you had to be very aggressive with them.

I took my training, the chief pilot would make sure we got up in windy days.

And I mean, oh, my God, how many go arounds it took to get finally lined up.

You know, okay, I got it.

I got it.

The wind shifts and ship takes off this way.

And you're dragging about three guys with them and everyone is yelling, let go!

Let go!

And when you get back onto the ground coming to walk up with the grass in their ear, fingernails and going, that landing sucked.

- You had to physically be strenuously sometimes moving the controls around to get the airship to do what you wanted to do.

It was like cruising down the road in a mid 60s muscle car.

And it was just super fun, like, you could feel it in your organs like it was just, a raw power type of an aircraft.

And systems and the engines were right there outside the windows, and it was just a really unique old school experience.

- Meanwhile, the blimp had gone global.

In the early 1970s, a crew was sent to Cardington, England, where they built the Europa, an airship that would cover events across the UK and Western Europe.

- So we sent parts overseas.

We had all of the pre manufactured parts here in the United States.

We shipped them, which the shipping itself was pretty unique because it was in one of the Super Guppies, but it carried all the parts over to England where these airships were built in the Cardington hangars, which were also very well known hangars were old World War Two airship hangars.

So we put together a base similar to where we had expanded in into spring, Texas.

We built a very similar base in Capena, Italy, which is just outside of Rome.

And the airship operated there for about the next 15 years.

So it traveled all over Europe, just like what we traveled here in the United States.

Got to see lots of unique sights, lots of very recognizable places that the airship stopped by.

We have some fantastic pictures with things like the Colosseum and the Grand Canal in Venice and lots of stops in Europe for the airship team over there.

We were actually present at the wedding between Prince Charles and Lady Diana.

And we were there in the skies watching the thing, helping from a video capture content standpoint and participating in the party, basically.

- By the 1980s, the Goodyear Blimp had been appearing at big events around the world for decades, securing its place as a cultural icon.

- We started to show up in places again that we had never imagined ourselves being in world pop culture, basically.

And so, so many unique moments of the blimp popping up in TV shows and, on movies or taking part in shooting movies, being part of the movie itself so we were playing two roles in some cases.

Even being made into cartoons with The Simpsons and just a little bit of everything.

It did make several movies with airships in them, like Hidden Valley.

You know, of course, Black Sunday in the 70s.

- I think it's one of the best blimp movies ever made, because there's such great blimp footage in it.

- I did a lot of TV shows, you know, back, back, way back, you know, when it was the only blimp in town, right?

You know, The Merv Griffin Show and I did a two hour show with David Letterman over New York City.

- I think there's a song about that we've got the blimp.

(We Got the Blimp playing) - The blimp also made appearances in Scarface, The Lawrence Welk Show, Ally McBeal, and even in an Ice Cube song.

(It Was a Good Day playing) - It Was a Good Day is my biggest song and that's a part in my show.

When I do Good Day, when I mention, you know, the Goodyear Blimp, everybody in the arena says the line, you know what I mean?

Having a good day is great, but the Goodyear Blimp is epic, you know?

So it was just a way to me to put a cherry on top of the day.

Everybody knows that when the blimp is up, it's got to be an epic event going on.

If you don't see the blimp, it ain't that big baby.

- So the blimp really became its own celebrity and because of that, there was a huge draw to it.

It was an icon, people wanted to see it, people wanted to get close to it.

- With this celebrity status and the demand for blimp rides growing, the blimp found a way to give back to the community.

- One of the things we do with the blimp is we provide rides to local charities.

I think the reason we do that, number one, it's good for the charity.

They need money and we can help.

But there's a demand for people wanting to ride in the blimp and we can't really sell tickets for people to ride on the blimp, but we can funnel that through a charity.

- I think their biggest charity now is in conjunction with the Marine Corps at Christmas time.

They do the Toys for Tots and they hype it on the night sign.

They even have Santa Claus in the hangar in Akron.

- People come in and they drive through.

They get just a chance to drive under or near the airship and see it up close through our hangar.

With the decorations and all, the handing off toys to the Marines, I mean, it's an awesome event.

- That's why we're here, is to make people smile, to give people rides, to be a part of our community, to give back.

Some of the best things that I've ever seen are when people get on the airship and they come off and they got this huge smile on their face and they've just got the ride of a lifetime.

And, you know, sometimes we're here all the time and we look past that because we see the airship every day and we forget what that means.

But that's really the whole point of the airship, is to be a part of our community, to give back and to put smiles on people's faces.

This was the best job ever.

I don't know how you can get any better than this job right here.

We hope you've enjoyed learning about what it's like to take a ride on the Goodyear Blimp.

I didn't realize you know how the blimp was used for charitable purposes in the community, so that's just really incredible to learn.

I'm Natalie Pillsbury, president and CEO of PBS Western Reserve, and I'm here with Lindsay Kuntzman, our chief development officer.

We are just taking a short break as you're enjoying icon in the Sky 100 years of the Goodyear Blimp to talk to you about supporting PBS Western Reserve.

We are a nonprofit public media organization, and we can only bring you shows like the one you're watching right now when we have strong support from our community.

So we're here live asking for that support.

We have a very special drawing, where you can actually win a ride on the Goodyear blimp.

So when you make a contribution right now by calling the number on your screen or giving online, you could be the lucky winner of a ride on the Goodyear blimp.

For yourself and a friend that you would like to bring along with you.

So very special drawing going on right now when you contribute to PBS Western Reserve.

And you can make that donation when you call 1 800 672 4549.

And while only one lucky winner is going to get that ride on the blimp with a friend, you don't have to go home empty handed if you make a donation tonight, because we have some incredible Thank you gifts.

I think these are the best thank you gifts that we have offered here at PBS Western Reserve.

When you make a gift of $5 a month, you have the opportunity to take home with you three trading cards.

These feature the Wingfoot one, two and three blimps.

They have facts on the back of the blimps on the back of the blimp cards, and I think these will be incredible.

If you got these framed.

They would make such a wonderful holiday present for someone who's maybe a blimp enthusiast or an aviation enthusiast.

but those are available at $5 a month.

We also have this great keychain.

It says Air Airships Crew on it.

It is.

I think it would make you feel like an official part of the blimp crew if you were carrying that around on your keys.

At $19 a month.

We have a four piece set of magnets featuring historical blimps going all the way back to the very first blimp, the Pilgrim.

We also have you've probably noticed these awesome shirts that Natalie and I are wearing tonight.

These are limited edition exclusive for just PBS Western Reserve.

They are available at $24 a month.

You will not find them anywhere else.

We only have them here at PBS's Western Reserve.

If you're able to make a $30 month donation, we have this incredible hat with the propeller and the 1925, the start date of when the blimp launched.

That is available for $30 a month.

And with that $30 a month, you will get that entry automatically into the giveaway too.

Perhaps a win a ride on the blimp.

It would be a great photo op if you're wearing this hat while you're riding the blimp.

I think so, yeah, make that donation right now and you'll also know that you are supporting PBS Western Reserve.

We also have what I'm calling our holiday package.

We have this great Goodyear blimp mug along with this Goodyear blimp ornament.

These are available together at $50 a month.

I really like this ornament because it does say celebrating 100 years in the sky on the back of it.

So again, $50 a month.

I think we have saved the best for last though.

I agree.

We have an authentic piece of fabric from the Spirit of Goodyear Blimp.

This is available at $100 a month.

You will be taking home this piece of fabric from the blimp, and you're going to feel good knowing that you are supporting PBS Western Reserve with that $100 month donation.

And who knows, you might get a ride on the blimp.

You could be that lucky winner.

Call 1 800 672 4549 or visit our website to make that contribution.

Yes, we are here live with you right now.

Because we, we need to raise the funds for our organization to remain strong moving into the next fiscal calendar year.

We are about to wrap up 2025, and we've seen a great show of support from the community, but we still have a ways to go to raise the funds needed.

So with your support, PBS Western Reserve will continue bringing you shows like the one you're enjoying right now.

We're going to take a little break, to share a heartwarming story about a couple who got married on the blimp.

I have to tell you one story, because my wife would be furious if I didn't.

I got married on the Goodyear blimp in Houston, and I met my wife on the blimp.

She was a passenger, and I met her while conducting one of the promo flights for Goodyear in the Houston area.

Three years later, I asked her to marry me, and she said only if I could get married in the blimp.

And I did not want to get married in my office.

So I, I went to Goodyear and I said, look, I'm kind of stuck here.

What are your guys thoughts on getting married on the blimp?

And they said, oh, that'd be a great idea.

I said, oh, thanks a lot.

So, they made a big deal out of it, and it went international and CNN picked it up, and one of my wife's clients was in Mexico City watching CNN and saw her get married on the Goodyear blimp.

And it was kind of a funny story.

What an incredible story about a couple that truly was brought together by the blimp.

Now, you might not be able to get married on the blimp, but by making a contribution to PBS Western Reserve right now, you will be automatically entered in a drawing to win a ride on the Goodyear blimp.

So when you make your contribution, you're automatically entered.

You.

If you're the lucky winner, you'll have the chance to bring a friend on that blimp ride.

It really is a once in a lifetime opportunity and something that you need to act now and make a contribution to get in on that drawing.

So call that number on your screen one 806 724549 and get in on the drawing to win that ride on the blimp.

Yes.

And you know there is only going to be one lucky winner.

But we have some incredible thank you gifts So you're not going to go home empty handed if you make a donation tonight.

We have what I think are some of the best thank you gifts we've ever offered here at PBS's Western Reserve.

One of my favorites is this keepsake blimp.

We have an authentic piece of the spirit of Goodyear blimp here.

So you can literally take home a piece of the blimp with you for $100 a month.

That $100 a month is going to support PBS Western Reserve.

It supports the local programs that you enjoy, like icon in the Sky.

It supports national programs like PBS NewsHour and Antiques Roadshow.

It supports our educational services to benefit our community.

We need you to step up right now.

We have had such an incredible outpouring of support from the community.

We are at 85% of our fundraising goal for 2025.

I know we can get to 100% if everyone watching steps up and makes a contribution.

Any amount will help us get to our fundraising goal.

Act now before the end of the calendar year.

Call 1 800 672 4549 or go ahead and visit our website.

Yes, it's quick and easy to make that contribution, and you'll feel good knowing that you're helping to keep this community institution strong for the coming year.

We truly rely on support from our community to do all of the work we do in the local community telling stories, bringing you documentaries like the one you're watching, and, you know, bringing educational services programs to children and families throughout our community.

So make that contribution now.

And when you do, we have a really special benefit available to donors that contribute $60 or more annually.

And that is passport.

Passport is our streaming service that when you become a supporter of PBS Western Reserve at that $60 a month level or higher, you will have access to this entire library of PBS programs, prior seasons of shows that you've loved, and maybe you haven't gotten to watch seasons that that weren't on air.

All of our local programs are also available on demand through passport, so that is an incredible benefit for our contributors at that $60 level or higher.

But, you know, we're asking you to take action now.

When you make a contribution, you'll automatically be entered in that drawing to win a ride on the blimp.

You can go online to make your contribution and check out all the thank you gifts that we have available.

Choose the one that's right for you, and it's quick and easy to make that contribution.

Yes.

And one thing that we should mention, you know, PBS Western Reserve is a nonprofit organization.

So that means when you make your donation, it is tax deductible.

And there are so many ways you can make a donation.

You can do cash check, credit card.

We take a qualified charitable donations.

We take IRA gifts.

Donor advised fund.

Call the number on your screen or visit our website right now.

Over the years, the blimp found itself in some unlikely situations and found a different way to help its community during difficult times.

- Specifically during the 1989 World Series.

And that's the World Series where there was an earthquake in San Francisco.

The airship was there because it was a huge event.

It’s the World Series, it’s a big event, the blimp is there.

And we were providing aerial coverage for ABC at the time.

And the earthquake happened while we were up filming the game.

And it was a really traumatic event around specifically the San Francisco area, but really, all of California.

And that spread really quickly because of the viewership on TV and things like that now, it was kind of one of the first major world catastrophes that everybody knew about very quickly.

- During the game, all of a sudden we heard a lot of noise from the production people.

And I look back at that the hill, we’re by Candlestick Park and I could see rocks and boulders are coming down the side of the hill.

And I thought, holy moly, the baseball game became secondary.

And then we started saying, can you fly towards downtown and see what's going on?

I said, sure.

So as we started heading towards the Bay Bridge, as I got closer, I realized that one of the sections of the bridge had collapsed and a car was hanging over the edge of it.

- You're looking right now at a live shot from the Goodyear Blimp, which of course was out there hovering over San Francisco for a much different purpose tonight.

- They kept us in the air for about 12 hours that day filming what we saw from the earthquake.

And the unique thing is San Francisco skyline at night is fantastic.

Except that day half of the city was lit, the other half was in darkness.

And as we flew down towards the Golden Gate Bridge, I noticed people were in the intersections directing traffic because the cops were too busy taking care of other things.

They said, we want you to start talking when we give you the cue and tell us everything you see.

- We're over San Francisco, and we just got a report from the San Francisco Tower that they've done quite a bit of damage there.

Also, we were over the Bay Bridge when it collapsed and we were listening to the rescue helicopters by the Coast Guard.

We understand that three people were evacuated by helicopter from the Bay Bridge.

- We found ourselves right back in that similar situation just a few years later when Hurricane Andrew hit Florida and really caused a lot of devastation across the southern parts of the state.

And made it so there was no power, people didn't know where to go.

- We were in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, when President Bush asked our CEO if they could use the Goodyear Blimp to fly over the affected areas of Homestead area down in South Miami because they had no power.

Everything was a mess.

The base, everything was a mess after the hurricane, but we flew over for 8 to 12 hours a day and fly our night sign with lights flashing.

For example, if you need medical help.

Because remember, nobody had even transistor radios or batteries for them or anything to— There was no TV, there was no power, nothing.

So we would flash these messages saying, if you see the red balloon, go there for medical reasons.

If you see a blue balloon, that's for water.

They could go to these different balloons and that worked out really well because it got everybody to know what was going on because they couldn't find anything out other than with the blimp.

- The blimp continued on crossing into the new millennium and major changes were on the horizon.

In 2011, the biggest change in the history of its airships program was announced.

A new generation of Goodyear Blimps.

The new airships would be a completely new style, designed to be faster and more maneuverable than the previous GZ-20 model.

The new model, known as NT as in new technology, was created by Zeppelin and included an internal framework of carbon fiber and aluminum, allowing vectoring engines to be mounted on the envelope rather than the side of the passenger gondola.

For the first time ever, the Goodyear Blimp would technically no longer be a blimp but a semi-rigid airship.

- At that time, we knew the GZ-20s were ending their life.

Everything has a life.

Everything has a lifespan.

So that airship was nearing its end of its life.

We knew that.

And so we were looking for what's the next generation of airships.

So we ended up in Germany and we were speaking with the Zeppelin Corporation.

We got to see the airship.

And then from there that was our real viable option that we felt that was turnkey, that would fit our needs.

- It does so many things that we just couldn't do before.

It's very quiet.

It's much bigger.

We can carry more weight.

It's better for aerial platform because we can actually hover.

We can hold still, We can move around.

We can do an air show with it.

But in order to get there, the crews had to work really hard.

The pilots had to work really hard.

Because what we found was that the 90 years of airship experience we had before that didn't carry over quite as much as we hoped it would.

And the helium inside was literally the only thing that really was the same between the old GZ series airships and the new NT style airship.

So we had to relearn what ground support meant.

We had to relearn how to travel.

We literally did trips from Wingfoot Lake to Akron Fulton Airport.

That's six and a half miles, and we failed twice before we got there.

But once we did get there and we figured this airship out, it opened up doors and capability that really allowed us to drive innovation.

That really allowed us to take the next step and really brought us back in to that point of relevance again.

- Not everyone embraced this change.

- So I think it's always funny because one of the things that was kind of a personal, warm spot in a lot of people's heart was the noise that the GZ-20 airships used to make.

On the same coin, we would get complaints for noise all the time with the old airships, especially when we were up in, you know, Cleveland or Los Angeles in the middle of the night.

When an event ended at midnight, and we had to grind home into a wind.

We don't have that noise footprint that we used to have.

We joke that we need some kind of loud speaker that pipes out GZ-20 noise between 8 and 4, and then we turn the noise off and we fly fast at night when nobody knows we're there.

So it's cool to me that even the noise of the blimp is something that people recognize and they still do with the new one it's just you have to be outside to hear it.

- While drastically different from the old style blimps, the new airships brought some welcome changes for the pilots.

- We have a really cool capability where the engines articulate and so similar to an Osprey that you'd see in the military, our engines will swivel up and we add power, we can take off vertically, kind of like a helicopter.

It makes us really efficient for takeoff.

And then when we go into cruise flight and we want max forward speed, we swivel down horizontal and then it propels us forward.

So it's a really efficient way for blimps to fly.

The NT model Goodyear Blimp can still be seen flying the skies today.

Three blimps currently operate in the US with airship bases near Akron, Ohio, Los Angeles, California, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Abroad, an NT model airship from Zeppelin is based in Essen, Germany.

The blimp fleet requires a large crew with diverse skills to operate.

About 20 people, two mast trucks, and seven total ground support vehicles follow the blimp from the ground while it flies to events.

- So a lot of people, we have mechanics, heavy duty mechanics, diesel mechanics, pilots, public relations.

So it's a big group that takes us to run an airship.

It's just not a bunch of people running out to catch a blimp.

- It's not the 8 to 5 weekends off kind of job it's a very open schedule kind of job, you know, you've got to be committed.

You've got to be flexible.

This is not a job.

It's a lifestyle and you have to live it.

You don’t work it.

- Day to day activities and airships are always different.

So there's never two days that are alike.

That's one of the great things with airships that you never get bored.

- It's not like another aircraft where it can just be parked and be set.

It's always moving.

It's full of helium.

As the helium heats up, the ship gets lighter as it cools down, it gets heavier.

And so we have someone here to compensate for all of that.

Because we don't want it to get too heavy.

We don't want it to get too light.

It's almost like a living, breathing thing, which is very unique.

- Very interesting job.

It had many aspects to it.

It just wasn't the typical go to work and do the same thing over and over again.

Each day, each flight was different and each time we went up to do a TV event, there was always something that came up that was unexpected.

I used to interact with the passengers every day.

I'd walk them out to the ship.

We chit chat, we get in the blimp.

I tell them stories about the blimp and give them a chance to sit in the pilot's seat when it was safe and they were thrilled.

And I could tell when they got off the ship that they were going to tell grandma, grandpa, uncle and aunts all about their blimp ride and the great pilot they had.

We do travel up to give or take 100 days a year.

It's just a whole different way of work.

We'll leave here with 20 people on the ship, all of our equipment and vehicles and everything.

And we hit the road.

We're completely self-contained everywhere we go, so we have to take all that stuff.

- I just feel blessed, you know, every time I fly or do something like it, I just think of, you know, there aren't too many people that get to have this experience, and I never let that pass me by.

I always take that moment to think about that when I'm out working.

We have just such a unique job.

And there are very many people that get to even see the airship, let alone ride in it or ride in it multiple times and be working behind the scenes and you're on top of stadiums, like, you just get such a unique view behind the scenes of everything that's going on.

- Managing such a unique vehicle comes with some challenges.

- The biggest challenge is the physical part of the job.

So when we talk about working on the airship, the engines themselves are 30ft in the air.

So when we're traveling or we're on the road and we're out and about, and we need to go up and do an inspection or we have to go up and change oil, or we have to do some, some sort of maintenance function on the engines we’re 30ft in the air.

And so to do that, we have special scaffolding that we hoist up to the engines and they work on the engines when they're outside.

- One of the unique things about airships from the very beginning, was the way that we parked them.

You can't just roll up onto a ramp or park it at a gate like you do an airliner.

We have to secure it somehow.

The old airships used a mast that generally was fixed to the ground with cables and stakes.

And with the new technology, one of the advancements that we have with the NT is that we're able to use a mass truck.

The advantage of that is that you can fold the mass truck all down and take it with you when you go somewhere.

Any way that you cut it, when you park it at the end of the night it's the biggest windsock on the field.

We have to take care of it all the time it's a really big responsibility that we train all of our crew members for.

So a lot of people don't understand or they think that we pack it up, we put it on a truck and we drive it to the next location.

That's not the case.

It flies everywhere it goes.

But it's never left alone.

It's a very needy aircraft, but it's worth taking care of, because when you're part of the team that gets to operate the icon of the sky, it's an honor to do the job and, and it's a lot of fun to travel with.

The Goodyear Blimp flies over dozens of cities every year, creating a spectacle along the way.

- We'll land at a local municipal, uncontrolled, untowered airport.

Park the ship out on a piece of grass, big open land somewhere.

And then the people will show up along the fence line, basically as close as they can get to the blimp.

Nothing makes me feel better than seeing other people that interested in what I'm doing to come out of their way, to come out to the airport and stand at the fence to ask questions.

So I try to take some time and go over there and talk to the people.

And, it's, you know, they have a lot of good questions.

They’re excited to see the blimp.

The number one question I always have is, what are you doing here?

You know, they want to know why is this blimp in my town?

So, usually when it's a small town like that, we're on our way from from point A to point B, and we're stopping somewhere along the way to get there but, yeah, it's fun to talk to them.

- It's one of the things I really like going into smaller towns, because it really is, it becomes a spectacle and you just see how much you light up people's faces and how much joy you bring to them.

- It takes a true love and passion for the airships to keep them flying for 100 years.

- I'm here for the love, definitely.

Anybody in aviation has to have a passion for it.

You're doing it every single day.

What we get to do here is even more unique and more, more passion to it, because it's such an American icon and we constantly get people coming in, passengers that are just so excited to be here.

You get reminded all the time of how cool this job is.

- I loved it the first time I got in the blimp.

I still love it today that the flying is different.

It doesn't fly like an airplane or a helicopter.

There's a little bit of an art to it.

It takes a lot of feel.

We call it seat of your pants flying.

You have to feel what the ship is doing, what the wind is doing while you're flying it and it's really the only aircraft I know of in the world that's like that to this day.

That's super enjoyable and I get a lot out of that.

- I got married on the Goodyear blimp in Houston.

And I met my wife on the blimp.

She was a passenger.

Three years later, I asked her to marry me, and she said only if I could get married in the blimp.

- To work here, it's a privilege.

I think it is, because it's the Goodyear Blimp.

Come on.

It's the Goodyear blimp.

And not everybody gets to work on it.

Now, I'm the old guy training the new kids so, being trained by the older gentleman, by Goodyear employees back then were... Those guys were awesome.

I call them my Goodyear dads.

They taught me how to drive a kenworth truck.

They taught me to drive MCI bus.

I was 20 years old.

I learned how to run cables, wedge cables, inspect night compress cables and stuff like that.

- But it's not only the love from the airships teams themselves that has carried the blimp through the years.

It's the love from the fans.

- People get emotional about it because it means something to their family.

And that's the important thing that connection is, is so strong and that connection is so important.

- I have two sons, I have identical twins, and they both have autism.

And one of the things when they were little, was we walked them around the blimp.

And we did that every Sunday morning with them, and they got to see the blimp and it was always the blimp.

We had the opportunity last month to take them up.

I didn't look outside the window much, I watched them.

My kids have never flown, so this was huge.

- I am an artist.

I consider myself a pictorial painter, mural painter, sign painter.

I love painting the Goodyear Blimp.

There's something about the sky reflecting off the blimp, and you kind of see it go like that.

A friend of mine was like, hey, man, the blimp painting was my favorite blimp painting.

And he had access to this billboard.

Oh it’s these moments that, like, sing.

The blimp I painted in the sky and I put it in the sky.

What else do you see up in the sky that's 100 years old.

Something like that.

I'm still here, like, you know?

These legs are still working.

- It's something that people always recognize.

People always get excited about it.

There's never a person on the beach that doesn't point and say, look, there's the blimp going by.

- There's nothing like the blimp.

I've been in a lot of things, but there's nothing like the blimp.

Who doesn't love the blimp?

I had conversations this morning with some of my customers and tell them, hey, I'm heading over to the blimp today.

And they all had stories about their kids when they were young, and their kids would look up and say, there's the blimp.

There's the blimp.

I think by far in Los Angeles, the blimp might be more iconic than our Hollywood sign.

- If you were to look at my office, you would think I worked for Goodyear.

It's completely covered with blimp memorabilia and I flown on the blimp seven times.

Of course, people think I'm a little bit crazy, because I do.

I just tell stories all the time.

I can't stop it.

It's just something I really enjoy and it helps me relive it a little bit.

You just cannot mistake the sound.

And I would be in my apartment in Akron and I could hear the sound coming and all of a sudden, you know, run to the window, run out to the porch and just be able to watch in the sunlight.

I won't live anywhere where there's not a blimp.

I moved to Florida knowing that there was a blimp down here.

So if there's not a blimp around I don’t want to live there.

On June 3rd, 2025, the Goodyear Blimp officially celebrated its 100th anniversary.

It was on this date, in 1925, that Goodyear first branded blimp, Pilgrim, embarked on its inaugural flight near Akron, Ohio.

A lot of work has gone into what we're looking at now, the people that are here, the facilities that we have, the equipment, the the airship that we're flying that's all built off of 100 years of other people's work.

So, you know, it's important to me to try to just not really preserve that history because that's that's for a museum.

We're not preserving anything here.

We're still doing we're still doing the history.

But it's important for me to respect that history.

We're building.

We're building on history.

We're building on tradition.

We've been doing this for 100 years.

I hope we do it for another 100 years.

And someone looks back and looks at something that I did that helped them 100 years in a future.

The fact that the thing is just floating through the air and it just made people feel they could stop and go, oh, there goes the Goodyear blimp.

But it also made people feel good because it hung around and it took its time.

It didn't just race through your life in a split second.

I wouldn't change his job for anything if, even if it was American Airlines came down and said you could be a captain, I’d say, Nope, I love doing this.

The blimp Centennial brought many celebrations from its hometown of Akron, Ohio, to visits all over the U.S.

and Europe, and even a special edition blimp throwback look.

So one of the things that was super unique and really fun about the hundredth anniversary year was being able to do, things that were specific to the airship and really, really show the airship off, as a tool of its own, as a, as the icon than it really is.

And one of the most unique parts of that was kind of paying homage back to our original 1925 pilgrim by rebranding Wingfoot One to be, the Pilgrim colors, the old vintage silver with the big black vintage Goodyear logo on it.

Just made it super special in the hundredth anniversary year to be able to kind of pay that homage back to the to the originals, to the grandfather of the fleet put together string together that entire hundred years of history that the Goodyear blimp really is.

The Goodyear blimp will continue to bring joy and goodwill to fans for years to come.

- The blimps really have that significance for people.

They represent delight and celebration, and they aren't zipping across the sky like jets.

They're up there kind of chugging along, looking kind of cute, you know, and, delightful people connect with it.

Wow.

That big thing’s actually flying up there, you know?

Well, there's no doubt the Goodyear airships have a grand future, the same future that they've had since 1925.

And blimps will continue to serve that kind of purpose, to delight people and call their attention to advertising in one way or or another.

- Being part of airship operations that is turning 100 years old really makes me feel special.

And that I was part of something that has been around for a very, very long time.

And people look up in the air and say, oh, there goes the Goodyear blimp.

And that's exactly what our mission was.

- A lot of times now, when I think back to my dad, memories of that, and I'm driving by the blimp and always having conversations about the blimp.

So that eventually led me into, aviation myself, at 16 years old.

I think the blimp had a lot to do with that.

I guess we all have a story about and memories with the blimp and mine go back to a dad that I was with daily.

It continues now to a four and a half year old granddaughter.

So it's more than just.

(unintelligable) I guess it does mean a lot, huh?

Why does this thing strike something in our soul?

I don't know, but it does.

Goodyear better keep it going.

- The fact that we've made it as an airship operations team 100 years, with a tool that some people at this point would kind of even call antiquated sometimes, where we continue to push innovation, we continue to reinvent what we do and how we do it.

And I'm not sure what the future will bring for us, but I'm sure that if we continue to do those things and we continue to be the icon we are, and to be exciting to our fans that whatever the future holds for the Goodyear blimp, we'll be there for it.

- Hey, blimp, happy 100th birthday.

I hope to be with you for another 100.

- Happy 100th anniversary to the Goodyear blimp.

And here's to a next 100 years.

- Happy 100th birthday blimp.

100 more and maybe 200 after that.

- Great part of American history It's awesome whenever we see it.

And I hope to see a lot more in the future.

- Happy 100th birthday, Goodyear blimp.

- Blimp.

Happy hundred years.

I mean, sis, you look really good for a hundred, honestly.

And maybe like the only thing in the world where it's encouraged that you just keep growing and getting bigger as you get older.

- I'd like to say happy birthday to the Goodyear blimp for 100 Good years - 100 years.

Fantastic looking forward to the next 100 years and looking forward to my children, my grandchild seeing it up in the sky and saying, I remember when grandpa used to tell me all about the blimp and seeing it all the time.

- Happy birthday Goodyear blimp!

- I just want to say happy 100th anniversary to the blimp.

I call it the LA Blimp It's the LA Goodyear blimp and I love seeing you around.

It's hard.

It's hard for me to talk to the blimp.

- Happy birthday.

to many more to come and we love you.

- Happy 100th anniversary to the Goodyear Blimp.

- Happy anniversary to the Goodyear blimp.

Happy birthday.

Specifically to my three daughters out here and, to the next hundred years.

Hope they're great ones.

- Keep rolling with the Goodyear blimp, baby.