Walt Stitt knows what it is like to go up in a hot air balloon at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta.

“You can’t believe it’s happening until you see it,” recalled Walt, who went on the Edgerton’s New Mexico Group Trip two years ago. “It wasn’t frightening. It happens slow, nice and easy. It’s not like an elevator where you shoot up. You get up there and all you see are other balloons. It’s beautiful. I have gone up in hot air balloons twice before in Ohio, but they were single balloons. Out in New Mexico, they are all over the sky! None of our people were nervous. The man who made the biggest fuss was our host Bill (Moor). Height bothers him, but he was a good sport and enjoyed it at the end!”

I am going to host New Mexico and the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta October 9th to the 16th. “It is a really good trip,” said Walt. “I had always heard of Santa Fe and wanted to see it too. There are delightful side trips like Taos.”

Walt has loved to travel all his life. He has combined going on Edgerton’s Group trips with planning trips himself. “I’m 87 and still at it,” said Walt. “I’ve been to London 27 times!”

He is going back to Wales - his favorite place to visit - in May for a 10 day trip and will see London again. He loves visiting the United Kingdom and has been to Scotland four times.”To everyone that lives near South Bend,” Walt said, “be sure to go see the Play ‘39 Steps’ that is playing now at the South Bend Civic Theatre. It is really good. I have seen that Play five times in London.”

Walt has been all over creation. “One time we flew into Scotland,” recalled Walt. “Edgerton’s built that trip. They had a motorcoach waiting. It is nice sometimes to have trips where everything is managed and all your baggage is handled. I will say that every place I have gone with Edgerton’s, that everything has been done well. They know what they are doing. We have gone with Edgerton’s over ten times.”

“One of the more interesting trips was to Czechoslovakia,” said Walt. “I went with my brother and our wives. This was right after the Wall had come down. At that time you could get a whole meals for $3 and that included appetizers, meal and dessert. They were still on the previous era, but that changed in a hurry.”

“I have been to Greece and to Italy a few times,” he added. “I went on a big Greek ship down the Panama Canal one time. I asked the waiter how old the ship was and he said it was being drydocked for good soon. I said it should have been a year earlier! I have been to St. Thomas, St. John’s, Nassau and places like that, and in the U.S. had a good visit last spring to Virginia.”

Like many of our Edgerton’s Group travelers, Walt is a WWII Veteran. He fought in some of the most intense Tank Battles in 1944 and 1945. Columnist Bill Moor wrote about Walt a year ago. Here is part of that Column:

He was still just 18 when he walked up the hillside behind Omaha Beach a few weeks after D-Day. He was a replacement tanker for E Company of the 33rd Armor Regiment. “Everybody else was pretty much gone by that time,” he says.

Walt caught up with the action, though. Did he ever. He lost two tank commanders to enemy fire, had three of his tanks destroyed and received two Purple Hearts for injuries suffered in combat.

As part of Taskforce Lovelady’s push into Germany, his first Sherman tank was hit by enemy fire that killed his tank commander and another member of their five-man crew. “And they fell in such a way that I couldn’t get out our hatch,” he says. “Fortunately, I saw a little daylight up by the driver’s hatch in front of me and made it out just before we were hit again.”

He suffered his own wounds that day. In fact, he ran up to another tank to get a dressing for a leg injury only to have a German sniper almost pick him off with his burp gun. (From South Bend Tribune, February 17, 2011, Bill Moor)

WWII Author Rob Morris also wrote about Stitt, and continued on with Stitt’s adventures in the War:

Over 1000 WWII Veterans are dying a day. Walt became Secretary/Treasurer of the 3rd Armored Division Association. He closed the group’s final national reunion on September 18, 2010, in Columbus, Georgia, the home of Ft. Benning. His closing included his favorite poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and the classic song “May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You.” The words to both are below:

“NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY”
by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

“MAY THE GOOD LORD BLESS AND KEEP YOU”
by Meredith Wilson (1902-1984)

May the good Lord bless and keep you,
Whether near or far away,
May you find that long awaited golden day today.

May your troubles all be small ones,
And your fortunes ten times ten,
May the good Lord bless and keep you,
Till we meet again.

May you walk with sunshine shining,
And a bluebird in every tree,
May there be a silver lining,
Back of every cloud you see.

Will you dream of sweet tomorrows,
Never mind what might have been,
May the good Lord bless and keep you,
Till we meet again.

May the good Lord bless and keep you,
Till we meet, Till we meet again.

You can see Walt read the poem and sing the song at the final Reunion here

Walt became a Lutheran minister who came to South Bend in 1977 as the assistant to the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and then later as the pastor of Bethany Lutheran Church on West Sample Street.

Walt’s wife Betty died in 2009, and it goes without saying how much he misses her. However, he still travels. “I have been fortunate to have the health and the money to do it,” he told me. “I was planning one of my trips to Wales where I was going to go alone, but my daughter got concerned. You see what you have to look forward to when you get older, Charlie!? Your kids tell you what to do! Well, I told her I would put a card in my wallet that read ‘If I die over here, ship my body back to South Bend.’ That didn’t go over so well with her.”

“My wife had died in May that year and my friend Shirley Pease had lost her husband in September,” Walt said. “For fifteen years we had all sat in the same Church pew and played Euchre. They had traveled with us on three trips. Well, when I was building my trip to Wales and my daughter was concerned, I told Shirley about it and she said, ‘I’ll go.’ I said, ‘Good deal!’ and we went on the trip.”

“I’m 87 and she is 79,” said Walt. “I’m seeing a younger woman! Actually, my kids had encouraged me to because they knew her so well. We have a lot in common. We both drink tea. We like the same foods. In Wales we get a lamb sandwich that is piled like they do at Arby’s with mint sauce and it is really good! In Wales there are 3000 people and 12,000 lambs, so you can eat lamb a lot! We have been to Wales and England twice, to Paris, and to Nassau.”

“Shirley has health problems,” Walt said. “She has Parkinson’s but she doesn’t shake so much like a lot of cases. She has had it for a long time. She does need to walk a lot so she is always getting on me to walk on the trips when sometimes I just want to ride, but it’s good for both of us. She volunteers at Memorial Hospital and heads up some of the Ushers at the Morris in South Bend.”

“I’ve got a good life….,” said Walt.

Charlie Adams

Inspirational Speaker, Group Travel Host

[email protected]