Bob Alm, EAA 279262, still doesn’t know exactly how he came up with the idea to fly around the lower 48 states in a Breezy to raise awareness and money for the fight against cancer. He said the idea just hit him after his mother died from cancer.
“I was cleaning up her condo and getting it ready to sell,” he said. “I did the last bit of things there, locked the door, and went to return to my little house in the woods in Geneva, Illinois. I didn’t get more than a block away and this thought went through my mind: I’m going to buy a Breezy and do what I can for the cancer effort and give rides and travel to all the states.”
Although he was an accomplished pilot when that idea struck him in 1995, Bob did not own a Breezy at the time. He had flown one, thanks to a friend who was generous with his Breezy, but Bob needed his own to make his idea a reality. After seeing an ad for one in Minnesota, Bob bought a one-way ticket there, purchased the airplane, and flew it back.
Bob took his bold mission a step further when he decided to sell his business and his home before heading out.
“I started telling people what I was going to do,” he said. “I said, ‘I’m going to sell my house, my business, and do this.’ People said, ‘Don’t do all of that. You can start out on it and try it out, and if it doesn’t work out you can come back and you have everything here.’ I said, ‘No, I want to do that so I can’t come back.’ It was kind of a safeguard so I had to do this mission. So I did.”
After making the necessary preparations, Bob was ready to head out. At the local airport, a cancer patient flipped a silver dollar from the year his mother was born to determine which way Bob would fly. If it came up heads, Bob would head west. If it were tails, he would go east. His route was not planned out in advance; Bob planned to use maps to locate airports as he went.
The coin came up heads, so about 10-15 minutes later Breezy Bob took to the sky for the first leg of his epic journey. He left DuPage Airport on September 14, 1997, and went west, starting a journey that would change his life forever. Bob estimates that he gave between 4,000-5,000 Breezy flights in his efforts to help the fight against cancer.
“Sometimes a third of the town would show up and I’d be out there all day and the next day giving rides with the help of EAA,” he said. “They were the backbone of the whole thing, to keep things safe and going.”
Instead of staying in hotels, Bob initially planned to camp at sites near the airports. When the local airport folks found out about his mission, he was almost always able to sleep somewhere at or around the airport. Many of his nights were spent under the wing of his Breezy.
Early on, Bob accepted donations from the crowds that flocked to the Breezy. He used the cash on hand to buy fuel to continue on, and called home to let a friend who agreed to manage his funds during the trip to donate the same amount to cancer research. Eventually, Bob decided it would be best to simply ask people to donate directly to cancer research themselves instead of needing to coordinate funds over long distances.
“I just would ask them, the people that rode on the Breezy, to do what they can for the cancer effort, whether it was money to cancer groups, or seeing patients in hospitals,” he said. “I would do that too on the trip.”
He also gave flights to cancer patients who could make it to the field. Friends and relatives would let him know they knew someone who would love to go up, and ask how long he would be at the airport giving rides. His answer was always the same: as long as they need him to be.
Bob said one flight that still stands out to him today was given to a young person who proclaimed that the flight convinced him he would be a pilot.
The boy tried and tried to give Bob $2 for his trouble, but Bob refused to take his money, asking him to simply sign the logbook and not worry about it. Later on that night, when Bob was leafing through his logbook and reading all of the names added that day, the kid’s two dollar bills fell out.
“I just almost had to start crying,” Bob said. “He wrote, ‘I really enjoyed the ride. I am going to be a pilot someday. Thank you. P.S. I snuck in $2 anyway.’ That gives you hope for humanity.”
Some time after Bob’s adventure concluded, a daughter of a local EAA member was working on a project for her class about Bob and his Breezy. When he found out, he drew his course on a map and gave it to her for the project.
He kept in touch with the family for a time, but they drifted their separate ways, as people do. Until one day Bob received the map back in the mail, along with a letter explaining that he should have it back, since there just wasn’t proper room for it in the daughter’s college dorm.
Bob still has that map, now at his permanent home with his wife in Montana. He said that experience, and the many others he had on his journey opened his eyes to the kinds of people who are out there.
“There’s so many great people out there in this country,” Bob said. “You realize that when you do something like this, and you’re right down to the grassroots level.”