By LISA WARREN

Staff Writer

CHUCKEY -- Neither mountains nor an ocean could keep one little balloon from its final destination: a beach in Bermuda.

On Monday, May 12, the volunteer staff of Durham-Hensley Health & Rehabilitation, a long-term care facility in Chuckey, sponsored a balloon launch for residents there. The event was held in conjunction with National Nursing Home Week.

Around 80 helium-filled balloons - one for each resident - was sent skyward during the launch. Attached to each balloon was a resident's name, a brief message and a contact number asking the person who finds the balloon to please call the nursing home.

Seventeen days later - on May 29 - a call was received at the nursing home from a man who was vacationing in the island chain of Bermuda. He had spotted one of the Durham-Hensley balloons as he was taking a walk on the beach and called to let them know it had been found.

The balloon had been released by resident Stella Decker, and her name and contact information was amazingly still attached to the balloon.

"We couldn't believe it!" said Joyce Gammon, activities director at Durham-Hensley.

"We've had balloon lift-offs before, but we've never had a balloon go that far," Gammon said. "We've heard back from people in North Carolina, but never as far as this."

The hook-shaped chain of islands that make up Bermuda lies in the Atlantic Ocean -- about 650 miles due east of Cape Hatteras, N.C. and more than 1,000 miles from Northeast Tennessee.

On the day that the balloons were released from the grounds of Durham-Hensley, Gammon said she remembered that the wind was gusty.

"It was really blowing," she said, "and we watched the balloons until they went so far that they were only tiny, tiny dots in the sky."

"We don't know what happened (to make the balloon travel so far), she said. "But it would be interesting to know."

Gammon said she didn't get the man's name who found the balloon or where he lived. She only knew that he was a tourist visiting Bermuda.

She said the man didn't know if the balloon had fallen into the ocean and then washed ashore on the Bermuda beach, or it if had remained air-borne for its entire trip.

Gammon said this was the fourth or fifth time that a balloon launch had been held for the nursing home residents.

She said she got the idea for the activity after one day finding a balloon that had been released by a Boy Scout from Illinois.

Gammon said she mailed the boy a care package from Tenneessee, including a Tennessee Volunteers t-shirt and other items related to the state.

Among the balloons that were recently leased, she said some were found in North Carolina and others in Elizabethton, Hampton and Roan Mountain.

"There was no other place like Bermuda, though," Gammon added with a chuckle.