The Spirit of Innovation was formally unveiled before at least 1,500 people at Wednesday morning's star-spangled christening at the Wingfoot Lake hangar. Despite Goodyear's efforts to keep the name a secret, it leaked Tuesday to an Akron radio station and a Cleveland TV station.
Matthew Harrelson, 35, a chemistry teacher at Hudson High School, and his wife, Kristi, 29, of Uniontown learned he won the contest a couple of weeks ago while they were vacationing in Virginia.
Goodyear had the winning name in its grasp less than five minutes after its online-only contest started at noon on April 11 -- though the company didn't know it at the time. All told, more than 21,000 unique names were entered and eventually whittled down to 10 finalists; the contest was set up in a way that prevented people from submitting duplicate names for the recently completed blimp.
As the winner, Harrelson gets to fly with the blimp for a day, while the nine other finalists get Goodyear tires. Goodyear has not released the other nine names.
Click on the headline above to read the story. There also were 18 photos at last count on the Ohio.com site.
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