About This Site:

About This Site: My name is Rick Balsamo. For many years I was involved as a volunteer with the camping and other social activities of the Chicagoland Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA), and then with those same type of activities with the organization that became the Association of Horizon, a non-profit providing social activities for the disabled that was started by MDA volunteers. This site is a record of my experiences in pictures and words. Please read the background and informational posts about this site and the use of the pictures on it, under the "General" label linked to over on the right side, and consider commenting whenever you can, and most importantly, consider a donation to the Association of Horizon (link).

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Up, Up, and Away with Our Beautiful Balloons -- Hopefully

For many years at the end of a week at Muscular Dystrophy Camp in northern Illinois we all gathered in the open, addressed postcards to ourselves, attached them to helium-filled balloons, and released them into the air.  We hoped a stranger somewhere would find each one, note where it landed, and mail it to us.  We would wonder – Would mine fly south to Arlington Heights or Oak Lawn?  Or north to Oconomowoc, Manitowoc, or even Tahquamenon Falls?  Maybe west to Genoa or Roscoe, or east across the lake to Saugatuck.  Or would it just get stuck in the trees all around us a few feet away, as many did year after year, the prospect of which Danny Martin would parody in his hilarious lunchtime send-ups of the old WGN Wally Phillips daytime (often boring) talk show.


One such day in 1982 I brought my camera, and here’s what it saw:
Irene Roach & Danny Martin
Two of the four Bolden Brothers: Eric and Russ (without Ceodes [Butch] and Stan)
Cherly Vanerio & Carol Tsao
(Front:) John Mayer & Eric Cook
Sitting L to R:  Mike Jarrett, probably Debbie Goodman, Sandy Kardaras, & Alice Dickerson.
Standing L to R:  Loretta Martin, probably Catherine Schuler, Kerry Barnett (from Australia), unidentified, Inhe Choi, and Elizabeth Schwartz      
Bob Schumacker & Warren Robinson
Chris Mathews (front) and Maureen Martin, with Kathy Bavaro in the background
Jimmy Cofer
Mae Hall & Barb Sesley sitting; behind them probably Sandra Twillie & Lisa Strubin.
Roger Gordon & Monica Murphy
Karen Black
Mary Frandsen
Danny Martin & John "The Golden Greek" Lianos

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