Good Samaritans buy balloon man a ticket home

The Outstanding Balloon Man boarded a Greyhound bus Saturday night for home, his stomach full and two bags of balloons in his pockets, the recipient of an outpouring of support from Colorado Springs residents.

By 5 p.m. Saturday, 40 people had called The Gazette, offering to buy Barry Lee Bartlett, 39, food and a bus ticket home to Dickinson, N.D. Bartlett, who ties balloons into various shapes to supplement his Social Security benefits, was featured in a news story that detailed how he became stranded at the bus station without money, family or a ticket home.

He lives alone in a motel in North Dakota, but he said he had friends at a restaurant who care for him and who were expecting him home for the Thanksgiving holidays.

Bartlett suffers from Tourette's syndrome, which causes him to twitch violently and yell without control. He said as a child he also endured abuse and long stays at various mental institutions.

He said he wasn't sure how he ended up in Colorado Springs. He was traveling from Syracuse, N.Y., after performing in a children's show. He produced evidence he had been taken off the bus in Cleveland and to a psychiatric hospital for examination. Doctors there found him no danger to himself or others.

Put back on a bus by security guards, Bartlett found himself in a city hundreds of miles south of home without a person he could call for help.

Two prominent businessmen and a third person, all of whom asked not to be identified, shared the cost of a hotel room for Friday night, food, balloons and a bus ticket.

But dozens of others stood ready to pony up also, including Kelli and Mark Drury. The couple, in their 30s, have three children, 3, 2 and 6 months, and get by on Mark Drury's salary. Helping would have pinched the family's checkbook, Kelli Drury admitted, but that was OK:

"We care about our community," she said. "You take care of one person at a time."

The Balloon Man, resupplied with his special long, thin balloons, left what he could for those who had helped him: expertly crafted latex depictions of Elmo, a poodle and a man riding a bicycle. He intended to leave two more complex creations - a Ferris wheel and a large double heart. But midday Saturday, while he ate his first real meal in days at a Denny's, two young girls eyed the colorful shapes he'd created moments before. They left clutching them.

"Sometimes it all works out," Bartlett said. "And sometimes it doesn't."

- Bill McKeown covers general assignments and may be reached at 636-0197 or mckeown@gazette.com

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