Kid’s balloon makes 660-mile trip from Harmony to Kentucky farm

Courtesy Photo KINDERGARTEN CLASS members in Carla Shipp’s room at Harmony’s James Poole Elementary School include, front from left, Devon Jetton, Blake Gilliam, Kyle Jones, Kason Trimble, Luis Lozano, Cody Massey; and back row, Sidney Thompson, Jalyne Riggs, Garrett Files, Cole Mayhan, Kaylee Clemens, Chloé Bilingsly, Azlee Whiteside, Blayze Phillips, Olivia Everett and Mrs. Shipp.

WHAT GOES UP…. MUST COME DOWN!! Just ask a kindergartener at Harmony’s James Poole Elementary School in Texas or a kindergartener at Calhoun Elementary School in McLean County, Ky. They’ll tell you that what “went up” in Texas—“came down” in Kentucky!!

On Feb 4, each student of Mrs. Carla Shipp’s kindergarten class released a red, helium balloon into the windy, East Texas sky to celebrate the 100th Day of School. Tied to each balloon was a message that read, “We are 100 days smarter! If you find this balloon please send it to: James Poole Elementary….etc. Please tell us where you found the balloon! Thank You!”

Exactly that is what Rodney Howard of Calhoun, Ky. did after he noticed shiny, red streamers with messages attached to 5 deflated balloons tangled up in a blackberry bush along a barbed wire fence at the entrance of his crop and cattle farm located about 660 miles northeast of Harmony Schools in Upshur County.

Howard and his wife, Patty, own Hanah Creek Farms in McLean County, where they, along with their two sons, manage two chicken houses and a cattle operation. They also harvest fields of corn, wheat, and soybeans.

Not only did Howard honor the kindergarteners’ windblown request, but he took it a step further by personally delivering the shriveled balloon and message to Mrs. Brown’s Kindergarten class at Calhoun Elementary there in Kentucky. She and her students were amazed at the flight this little message-in-a-balloon had made across the skies.

In response, she and her students mailed hand-written letters with questions and drawings of things associated with the state of Texas to Mrs. Shipp’s class. Two other balloons from Mrs. Seahorn’s kindergarten class were located in Arkansas and one other balloon from Mrs. Gunn’s class was located in West Virginia.

Maybe not “from sea to shining sea,” but undoubtedly through “spacious skies” these kindergarteners have been “crowned thy good with brotherhood”……”above the fruited plain” and “over purple mountain majesties”…..all the way from Texas to Arkansas, to West Virginia, and also to Rodney Howard’s “amber waves of grain!”