Adventurer Steve Fossett was declared legally dead on 15 February 2008 by Judge Jeffrey A. Malak of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois. He disappeared on 3 September 2007, while flying from the Flying-M Ranch, near Yerington, Nevada, in a two-seater airplane. He was expected back by noon, but never returned. In late November, Fossett’s wife Peggy Viehland Fossett (whom he married in 1967) petitioned the court to have her husband declared legally dead.
Fossett made millions as a commodities trader, focusing on soybean futures, but became famous after his retirement as an explorer and adventurer. He set more than a hundred world records as a pilot and sailor, according to his web site, www.stevefossett.com.
In 2002, he became the first person to circumnavigate the world solo in a hot-air balloon. In 2005, he became the first solo pilot to fly a jet airplane around the world without stopping to refuel. As part of a team, he and co-pilot Einar Enevoldson became the first to fly a glider into the stratosphere, reaching a record altitude of 50,671 feet in 2006.
In 2004, aboard his 125-foot maxi-catamaran Cheyenne, Fossett and his crew circumnavigated the globe in 58 days, 9 hours, 32 minutes, and 45 seconds, beating the previous record by almost 6 days.
He was an adventurer in other fields of endeavor: he swam the English Channel in 1985 (for which he received a trophy for the slowest crossing of the year); climbed the highest peak on every continent except Mount Everest; drove a dogsled in the Iditarod race in Alaska (placing 47th); drove a Kremer Porsche 962C for 24 hours in the Le Mans sports car race; sailed an airship to a world speed record; and competed in the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii.
Perhaps the only frontier that didn’t draw his attention was space, because he wasn’t interested in merely being along for the ride. As he told Newsweek in 2003, “Flying in the space shuttle would be fascinating, but I’d want to be the pilot.”
Fossett’s autobiography, Chasing the Wind, was co-written by Will Hasley, and published in 2006 by Virgin Books (many of his record attempts were underwritten by Richard Branson, the head of the Virgin group of companies).
Fossett was born James Stephen Fossett on 22 April 1944, in Jackson, Tennessee. He grew up in Garden Grove, California, where his father managed a soap factory. As a child, he suffered from asthma, but he pushed himself athletically. He loved hiking and other outdoor adventure. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University in 1966 and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis in 1968. He took a job in Chicago running the information-technology division of a department store, but was quickly bored, and decided to switch careers.
Fossett went to work for Merrill Lynch, and then started his own brokerage firm, Lakota Trading. He was also a principal in Larkspur Securities and Marathon Racing, which developed and owned much of the technology he used in his adventures.
Fossett is survived by a brother, Richard L. Fossett III, and a sister, Linda G. Dansby.