My Genealogy Hound

Lawrence Walters, Larry the Lawnchair Pilot, grave, Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles County, California, photos

The grave site of Larry Walters, born as Lawrence Richard Walters. Walters was born in Los Angeles, California on April 19, 1949. Walters had a life long dream of being a pilot but was unable to achieve that goal due to poor eyesight. He did however serve in the military in Vietnam. After leaving the service, he gave considerable thought to how he could fly some sort of aircraft. He learned of large weather balloons and concluded that a group of balloons would be sufficient to lift him up into the air well above his neighborhood.

He obtained 45 weather balloons, each measuring eight feet in diameter and inflated 42 of them with helium. He then attached the entire group of balloons to an ordinary lawn chair which was anchored to his vehicle. He was equipped with a parachute, a camera, a citizens band radio, food and drink. He also carried an air gun with which he intended to use to deflate the balloons to make his gradual descent. After his preparations were complete, he strapped himself into the lawnchair and had the anchor lines cut loose. The date was July 2nd, 1982 and Walters was 33 years old.

What Walters had not anticipated was how rapidly and how high he would ascend upward. While there is some dispute as to how high he flew, most estimates are to about 16,000 feet, which is slightly more than three miles high. At 16,000 feet, the air temperatures are very cold and oxygen is low. There were two different commercial airline pilots who radioed that they viewed a man in a lawn chair flying nearby. Since Walters had no means of steering his makeshift aircraft, he was carried about by the winds and eventually drifted into the restricted airspace over LAX airport. His plan to shoot the balloons with his air gun to bring him down failed since he had dropped it overboard during the flight after only shooting a few of the balloons. He did however gradually descend.

His descent brought him down across power lines which caused a twenty minute power outage across the area. He was able to lower himself to the ground whereupon he was immediately arrested for violating restricted airspace and flying an unlicensed aircraft. He was fined and for a short time was something of a celebrity and even appeared on the Late Night with David Letterman show. During all of the excitement, he failed to record a single photo despite having a camera with him.

Sadly, just eleven years later on October 6, 1993, Walters took his life while hiking in the Angeles National Forest. He was 44 years old. His remains were cremated and interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles County, California.