Bay Area's balloon boy scaled heights of fame

When the balloon boy story broke last week - about the 6-year-old who was supposed to be helplessly soaring through Colorado in a balloon - there were lots of reactions.

But Marin contractor Dan Nowell had the most unusual.

Been there. Done that.

In 1964, Nowell was a skinny 11-year-old who volunteered to help launch a hot air balloon in Mill Valley. But when the balloon abruptly lifted off, his fingers became entangled in the rope. As a horrified crowd of 200 spectators watched, the sixth-grader from Tamalpais Valley Elementary School was hoisted 3,000 feet into the air.

"People still refer to me as the Balloon Boy," Nowell said. "My kids got pretty tired of it over the years. I did get some interesting phone calls and e-mails last week. I said, 'Somebody is trying to steal my thunder.' "

Unlike the kid from Colorado, whose parents face fines and charges for manufacturing the story, Nowell's experience was real and captured the nation's attention before news helicopters, Twitter, and cable news networks came to be.

"The most extraordinary thing was the power of the press," Nowell said. "I got letters from all over the world addressed to 'Balloon Boy.' "

The basics are pretty simple. Nowell and some of his friends rode bikes to a field near Tamalpais High School on a Saturday morning in April to see the balloon. When they arrived, someone asked if they could hold a rope for the launch. Nowell, last in line, wrapped the rope around his left hand, but over the roar of the hot air burner, didn't hear the command to cast off.

'I couldn't let go'

As his feet flew off the ground, one of his father's friends grabbed his legs and tried pulling him down. The yank wasn't strong enough to bring the balloon back, but it did cinch the rope tightly around four fingers of his hand.

"I couldn't have let go if I had wanted to," Nowell said. "It was almost like a dreamlike experience. As the people on the ground got smaller and smaller, all I wanted was to do anything I could to relieve the pain."

Nowell says it hurt so much he was trying to reach his pocketknife, thinking he would cut the rope, even if it meant dropping from the sky.

Balloonist notices at last

Meanwhile, up in the basket, balloonist William Berry of Concord was utterly unaware that he had a passenger. The racket from the hot air burner kept Berry from hearing Nowell yelling. It wasn't until he reached 3,000 feet that he turned off the burner and looked over the side to see a boy hanging from a rope.

According to media lore, the first thing Nowell shouted up was, "Sir, could you please help me?" It seems a little hard to believe he would be so polite, but Nowell isn't about to ruin a good line now.

Is that really what he shouted?

"Um ... sure," Nowell said.

Berry managed to set the balloon down in a backyard in Tamalpais Valley. Nowell crashed into a plum tree but landed safely. His 10-minute flight was over, but the really wild ride was just beginning.

He was on the front page of The Chronicle the next morning, and that was just the start of it. He fielded interview requests, made the news wires, and even was flown to New York to appear on the nationally televised game show "To Tell the Truth."

"I didn't have any psychological scarring from the event," he said. "I even went up in a balloon again with the same pilot."

A few days of recovery

Nor did he have any physical scarring. He had some numbness in his left hand for a while, and his fingers were packed in ice for a few days, but now he says he's perfectly fine.

"I even think my arms are the same length," he said.

C.W. Nevius' column appears Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. E-mail him at cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle