Best of Lake Erie — Meet Traveler Put-in-Bay Paul
One Lake Erie islander's lifelong dream of space travel becomes a reality as he rockets to the stars and back, bringing a piece of the island with him.
On Ohio’s South Bass Island, Paul Jeris is affectionately known as “Put-in-Bay Paul.” He may not be a global celebrity like singer Katy Perry, but now he shares something remarkable in common with her: Both have launched into space aboard the New Shepard, Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket. Jeris brought along a front-page tear sheet from the Put-in-Bay Gazette for the ride.
The real-estate entrepreneur, who developed the Island Club and Put-in-Bay Condos, spent his childhood summers on Florida’s Space Coast watching historic NASA launches. “It was my dream to go into space ever since I was young, but I never thought it would come true,” he says.
On May 31, Jeris and five other passengers, now bonded forever by Mission NS-32, crossed the Kármán Line –– the internationally recognized boundary of space, 62.1 miles above the Earth.
“I looked out the window and said, wow!” Jeris recalls. “I saw the darkness of space where it meets the blue, and about two-thirds of the Earth below. Unbelievable.”
From launch to landing, the mission lasted just 11 minutes. After reaching speeds of up to 2,000 miles per hour, the capsule separated from the booster and gave the passengers three to four minutes of weightlessness before parachuting back to the West Texas desert. When the hatch opened, Jeris stepped out shouting, “O-H-I-O, we did it!”
Having visited 149 countries, Jeris thought he had seen much of the world, but nothing quite like this. “I’ve had a lifetime of looking up at the stars,” he says, “but this once, I finally had the chance to look down. I’m still trying to process it all.”
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