Balloon from preschool project found hours later

Students at Bright Beginnings Preschool prepare to launch the balloons they hope someone will later find and return. The balloon launch is an annual tradition at the facility. Left to right: Quade Hays, Drake Ketterman, Colin Hale, Maci Barton, Caleb Stanley and Cailyn Hollands. --submitted photo

To celebrate the end of the summer every year, for the past 10 years, the children in Tracy Sewell's Bright Beginning's Preschool class have a little tradition -- releasing balloons. Every year, each child launches a balloon with a bag containing a note that says:

"We sent this message by balloon, in hopes that it would get to you. Whoever you are, please let us know. We were wondering how far it'd go."

The note also has a picture the student has drawn and contact information for the preschool.

Sewell keeps track of each balloon that is found, what direction the wind carried it, and the person or persons who found it. Some years are more fruitful than others -- from her data she's collected most of the balloons are found with in a few days to a few weeks. The longest time period, however, was when a student released the balloon on Aug. 4, 2006, and it was reported found on April 3, 2007, when the reporting party was out hunting mushrooms around Stockton and El Dorado Springs.

Once, the finder wasn't even a person -- a puppy in Milo by the name of Mr. C brought a balloon home to his owner.

On Aug. 14, 2009, her class freed balloons during the morning hours, and Sewell received a call that afternoon from John Coffman, a farmer from Papinsville, Mo., located east of Rich Hill. The balloon and letter he found belonged to Bright Beginning's student, Drake Ketterman.

"I found it in my bean field," Coffman explain. "I was checking to see if it needed to be sprayed again, and I saw something not normal. I walked over, and it was a balloon."

When he called the preschool, he said Sewell was very surprised that someone had found a balloon in just a few hours after they sent off the balloons. In decade that this tradition has been going on, this was the shortest, and most shocking, time frame a balloon has been found and reported.