PROVO — Sporadic coughs of flame disturbed the Friday morning calm as crews filled their hot air balloons for a test flight before the Independence Day weekend.
Almost half of the 27 balloonists expected at the annual balloon launch during Provo's Freedom Festival celebration prepared their balloons and tested them before Saturday's launch. Among them, state Sen. Curt Bramble, who with family and friends huddled together, unfolding the envelope of their new balloon for its inaugural flight. The red, white and blue balloon is set to lead the event in its 34th year.
"We call it the flagship of the festival," Bramble said, "pun intended."
It's not his first star-spangled balloon; Bramble began flying a stars and stripes balloon in 1986. That flight of his first American flag balloon began a tradition of inviting honored guests for a ride during the balloon festival. Those guests have included Soviet-era defectors, Olympic competitors and local celebrities.
Viktor Belenko and Robert and Yuna Hutyra, all of whom escaped the control of the Soviet Union, became the first set of honored passengers in Bramble's balloon.
Belenko, a Soviet fighter pilot, gained fame when he defected to the West in 1976. Flying under radar detection, Bolenko absconded with a Soviet MiG-25 fighter jet. He landed the jet in Japan and his actions provided U.S. intelligence agencies with unprecedented access to the plane, which at the time was a closely guarded military secret.
The Hutyras and their two young children found the inspiration for their own escape through a bootlegged copy of a Reader's Digest story about a pair of East German families who flew to freedom in a balloon. While the escape of the East German families provided the inspiration for the Disney movie "The Night Crossing," the Hutyra family followed the example and crafted their own balloon out of nylon raincoats. In September 1983, they fled their home in then-Soviet controlled Czechoslovakia, flying across the border to Austria.
"We've been privileged to take someone who has literally put everything on the line, risked everything to taste the freedom that you and I take for granted," Bramble said.
In more recent years, honored guests have included Saratoga Springs resident and Olympian Noelle Pikus-Pace, who competed in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, and took silver in the women's skeleton race at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. The family of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was also invited to last year's balloon festival.
Grace Norman, 19, who took gold in the paratriathlon at the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio, was invited as the honored guest for this year's festival.
Norman hails from Jamestown, Ohio, but she often spends her summer in Utah, living with host families while she trains.
When a friend from a previous summer visit introduced Norman to the Bramble family, they were quick to reach out to her as their honored guest passenger.
"They were like 'Well, we really want you to go in a balloon ride,' since I've never done that," Norman said. "I have this really cool opportunity and they have just been really great in making a lot of things happen for me."
Norman will take off in the balloon on Monday morning.
Paul Warner, the executive director the Provo Freedom Festival, said he has enjoyed meeting with a number of the honored guests and seeing them "full of marvel" as they take their first flight in a balloon.
America's Freedom Festival at Provo runs through Tuesday.
Warner said the festival is expecting calm winds and cool morning temperatures, good conditions for the balloons throughout the weekend.
The hot air balloons will fly on Saturday, Monday and Tuesday morning between 6 and 8 a.m.