After Long Addiction Struggle, York PA Balloon Artist Dies of Overdose
Chris Palmer, a balloon artist from York PA who had long struggled with addiction, recently died from an overdose. He was 41.
As reported by the York Daily Record, Chris Palmer’s mother was a heroin addict, and when Chris came into his stepmother’s life at 2 months, he had been through withdrawal and was on the way to recovery – as much as an infant can recover from such a thing.
His stepmother, Cora Palmer, said he was the happiest baby she’d ever seen. He was precocious and extremely intelligent. When he was 2, Cora read “The Chronicles of Narnia” series to him, all seven volumes. Two years later, he asked Cora to read the books to him again. He remembered them and could recite from memory the plots and characters of each of the volumes of C.S. Lewis’ classic.
Palmer moved to Philadelphia with his girlfriend and went to work in restaurants – by then, he figured out he wasn’t wild about electronics – while his girlfriend went to grad school at Drexel. It was there he found his calling.
He had been scouring the want ads, looking for a job, just about anything, when he saw an ad that said, “Earn $10 to $45 an hour as a balloonologist.”
A what?
Balloonologist is the fancy name for the person who twists balloons into sculptures, otherwise known as a balloon artist, or the term preferred by the art’s practitioners, twister. Chris thought it would be interesting. He took to it, once he overcame his fear of balloons popping while he twisted them. He had a natural showmanship, despite being a pretty reserved, even shy, person.
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To learn more about how a York PA balloonologist died of an overdose, please visit the York Daily Record.
