World | USA
'He hasn't wasted a minute of his life'
Adventurer Fossett vanished on a solo pleasure flight on a single-engine plane on September 3.
- AP
- Published: 01:26 February 17, 2008
Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, who risked his life seeking to set records in high-tech balloons, gliders and jets, has been declared dead, five months after he vanished while flying in a small plane.
The self-made business tycoon, who in 2002 became the first person to circle the world solo in a balloon, was last seen on September 3 after taking off in a single-engine plane from an airstrip near Yerington, Nevada, heading toward Bishop, California. He was 63.
At the request of his wife, Peggy V. Fossett, a judge declared Fossett legally dead in Cook County Circuit Court as a step toward resolving the legal status of his estate, said her attorney, Michael LoVallo. Judge Jeffrey Malak heard testimony on Friday from Peggy Fossett, a family friend and a search-and-rescue expert before deciding there was sufficient evidence to declare him dead.
"It was very sad," LoVallo said, "and at first she hoped and sort of envisioned him walking down the road the next day with another story to tell. But as the days went on, she realised it wasn't going to happen as it had on other occasions when he'd had close calls."
While flight records brought him his greatest fame, Fossett, who was paunchy for most of his life, also climbed some of the world's best-known peaks, including the Matterhorn in Switzerland and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. (Everest did elude him.)
With top-notch endurance and concentration, he swam the English Channel and completed the Boston Marathon, the Ironman Triathlon, the Iditarod dog sled race, and, as part of a team, the 24 Hours of Le Mans car race.
"Steve's lived his life to the full, and he hasn't wasted a minute of his life," Fossett's rival-turned-comrade, British billionaire Sir Richard Branson, had said as the search went on. "Everything he's done, he's taken a calculated risk with."
But Fossett was on a pleasure flight when he vanished and not looking for a dry lake bed to use as a surface on which to set the world land speed record, as was initially reported, according to his wife's petition.
Dozens of planes and helicopters spent more than a month searching the rugged western Nevada mountains before the effort was called off as winter approached. The search area covered 52,000 square kilometres, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal.
LoVallo said Mrs Fossett would like to recover the remains "and really find out what happened". Plans are to resume a recovery search in the spring.
A Stanford University graduate with a master's degree from Washington University in St Louis, Fossett went to Chicago to work in investments and founded his own firm, Marathon Securities.
"Business is much easier for me," he told The Washington Post in a 1987 interview. "Sports is often very humiliating, because there are so many better athletes in these events. I would like to be the best in everything, but that's not possible. I risk humiliation because I have a genuine interest in participating," he said.
"I imagine that when I'm 80 years old and sitting in a wheelchair that I might do something like take a remote control airplane and try and flight it around the world," he told CNN last year.
"I plan to be setting and breaking records indefinitely."
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