Says community helped her family heal from tragedy
Updated: Tuesday, 27 Sep 2011, 11:19 PM MDT
Published : Tuesday, 27 Sep 2011, 10:01 PM MDT
- Reporter: Dean Staley
ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – Almost a year after her famed balloonist husband died competing in a long-distance balloon race in Europe, Nancy Abruzzo is trying to turn her heartache into hope.
“I’ve been really excited to have a project and a place to put my pain – and that’s with a place that Richard loved and we adored,” she said. “It is a true gem in this city, which is the balloon museum and the fiesta par.”
The project near and dear to her heart is a permanent tribute to lost balloonists slated for the Balloon Fiesta Park in Albuquerque. The tribute will be part of the city’s upcoming bond issue.
“We really feel fiesta as an extension of our family,” Abruzzo said. “We feel a lot of love there, a lot of healing there, so any aspect of that brings comfort. You know, it is hard”
Nancy Abruzzo is raising matching funds for the project, including proceeds from a children’s book about ballooning she wrote.
Richard Abruzzo set off with his co-pilot, Carol Rymer Davis, from Bristol, England, on Sept. 25 to compete in the Gordon Bennett Gas Balloon Race. In that race, the balloon that travels farthest on a particular amount of gas wins the race.
It is the sport’s most prestigious event and a race that Abruzzo and Rymer Davis won in 2004. However, the duo encountered bad weather off the coast of Italy, and the balloon plunged into the Adriatic Sea killing both pilots.
Richard Abruzzo was carrying on a family ballooning legacy that started more than 30 years ago with his father. Ben Abruzzo was part of the crew that first crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon when he accomplished the feat in 1978 in a balloon called the Double Eagle Two.
Richard Abruzzo broke his father’s endurance ballooning record in 199, when he sailed with Troy Bradley from Maine across the Atlantic to Morocco.
In the days that followed Richard Abruzzo’s death, Nancy Abruzzo said her main priority was comforting her children, Mary Pat, 13, and Rico, 8.
“Rushing to my children and really explaining to them how lucky they were to have a father that followed his dreams and lived with passion and lived life every day,” she said. “Coming from New Mexico, we are people who think and live with our hearts. And there’s an enormous amount of faith and hope, and so we felt the energy during this horrific tragedy.”
In the meantime, her efforts to establish the lost balloonists’ tribute and reading to school kids in Albuquerque is helping to alleviate the pain caused by her husband’s death.
“God’s provided for us (and) he will continue to provide for us,” Abruzzo said. “He’s placed us in a community that has embraced us and prayed for us and has helped us heal.”
