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Broadwick - 8

Q: Did parachutes often fail to open on you? Or not work?

Broadwick: We had a certain amount of trouble in the air with parachutes, but none ever failed with me, because -- well, I'm still here.

Q: The newspaper ad said: "Tiny Broadwick every day trifles with death." Did you feel that you were taking tremendous chances every day?

Broadwick: No, I didn't. I knew I was good, that I was doing something that I knew something about, something that I wanted to do, and I loved it, and I just didn't feel... Whenever I had a hunch not to go up in a balloon, I didn't go up. That was one of the rules: if we felt like something was going to go wrong, not to go up. I only had that experience about twice in my life, and one time I had to try to go up, and somebody had kicked the knife on the chute that cut the rope half in two, and just as I was taking off from the ground, the complete parachute and I dropped away from the balloon. I wasn't hurt. But you see, I'd had a hunch before that happened, not to go up -- but there was nobody to take my place, so I had to try. As they say, the show has to go on.

Q: You said there were six different parts to the act?

Broadwick: Sometimes we'd make a double balloon ascent. Whoever was working with us would do two parachutes, and I would either -- or he would do two parachutes and I would do four -- so this made six parachutes going through the air at the same time.

Q: You mean you'd fall will one, cut loose from that, go down with another, and so on, taking four to get to the ground altogether?