The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1894-03-08
JUMPING FROM A BALLOON.
Miss Hazel Keyos Tells How 1t Feels to
Meet the Earth.

Meet the Earth.
Mrs. Romig is pleasant bright eyed,
capable looking little parsonage of modest
demeanor and methods of conversation.
She has been engaged in ballooning for
a number of years. Professionally she is
known as Miss Hazel Keyes, balloonist
and parachute jumper.
She was trained nurse by profession
and engaged in aeronautics because her
husband health failed him. and she found
it necessary to do something more lucra-
tive than nursing, and as he was profess
sional aeronaut, and she had gathered
quite an interest and knowledge of the
business from him, she determined to en-
ter his field and win in rapid way the
income that was necessary for the school
ing Of her three children, the maintenance
of the family generally and the added ex-
pense of his illness. She says she has sue
ceeded amply in her undertaking, and
though Mr.. Romig's health is greatly i'm
proved she has no special desire to reln-
quish the business.
Asked to explain as clearly as possible
the sensations peculiar to the ascent and
descent of a person to and from the ex-
traordinary attitudes to which she travels,
Mrs. Romig said;
1.-The sensations are Numerically oppo-
site to the general idea that prevails among
people who never made such attmpts. In
stead of feeling yourself lifted bodily and
swiftly up into space, you have realistic
sense of staying just exactly where you
were and of the earth falling away and
al g.
ues just so long as your balloon continues
to rise. When it comes to a standstill,
you realize for the first time that you have
moved upward, and of course the wonder
full panorama spread out below you gives
you instantadvice of the immense altitude
you have attained.
1.-The descent from such tremendous
height by the parachute is another thing,
though it, too, involves something of the
same sensation, reversed. You seem to see
the earth ascending to meet you, but your
progress downward is so gentle and so
much more deliberate that you cannot but
know you are going down. This fact is
forcibly impressed upon your mind when
you cut loose from the balloon.
1.-THE descent, then, until the parachute
fills is as sheer and sudden and direct as
any unprecedented fall you ever expert
enced, ranging in depth, according to the
volume of wind, from % to 100 feet, and
this is the most unpleasant part of my
business. The same precaution of holding
the breath is rs imperatively necessary in
this first fall as it is when you are sub
merged in the water, and in default OF
such precaution you are equally liable Ia
strangulation and death as in the water. ~
In response to question as to the long.
est jump she had made in her career as an
aeronaut, Mrs. Romig said that in 1890
at Bakers beach, just inside the Golden
Gate, at San Francisco, she made a per.
fectly successful jump from an altitude
determined by mathematical instruments
to be just fraction over 211s miles. ShC
alighted in the bay, but being fully pro
tected with q life preserver-which she al
ways dons when exhibiting near rivers
lakes or other large bodies of water-sht
was all right when picked up by the boat
man who went instantly to her relief.
Mrs. Romig says, "The easiest place il
which to land is a body of water or plow
ed field, but of the two prefer the field.
Oregon Statesman.