It was just a fire drill, probably a welcome break from classes for the students at Draper Elementary School. They were standing on the blacktop, waiting for another bell to ring to tell them it was time to go back inside. Then they looked up.

What they saw was shaped like a football, but much bigger. Big-as-a-house bigger. Big as a really, really big house. And it was flying. It was a Goodyear blimp.

That was more than 20 years ago, and those kids are still talking about it.

"Of course, none of us had ever seen anything like that before," Daphne LaFleur said. "That was pretty much the biggest thing that had happened to any of us at that time.

"Draper is a very small place. We don't even have a stoplight."

LaFleur was in first or second grade then -- she can't remember which -- but she does remember the blimp circling the school yard. She remembers waving to the pilots. She remembers their waving back.

"What I remember," she said, "is standing outside and just being in awe."

LaFleur, now a kindergarten teacher, is about to get another, much closer look at a blimp. And she's taking her class with her. They're just some of the 2,000 or so students who'll get a close-up view of the Spirit of Goodyear, a blimp based in Akron, Ohio, that's coming to help celebrate Thompson Tire's 40th anniversary. The blimp will be tethered Monday and Tuesday at the New River Valley Airport in Dublin. Anybody can come by and see it from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. But only those students and a few other VIPs will get to walk out on the runway, right under the big airship.

Fran Boyd, president of Thompson Tire, got to ride in the Spirit of Goodyear about a year and a half ago with her children, Sydney and Matthew.

"My children today still talk about it," Boyd said.

That inspired Boyd, when she got a chance to bring the blimp here, to share the experience with as many children as possible. The blimp carries only seven people at a time, including the pilot, so it's not practical to give rides to all the elementary school students near the company's stores. But she's arranged for them to get a really close look at the Spirit of Goodyear.

A few people will get to fly in the blimp. One of them is Gayle Kiser, LaFleur's teacher all those years ago. She knew the fire drill wasn't really a fire drill. Folks at Newbern Elementary had seen the blimp fly by and they alerted their colleagues at Draper.

"They saw it go over and they called us, so we had a fire drill," Kiser said. "So all the children went outside, and here the blimp came."

When the blimp comes this time, Kiser and LaFleur will see it up close, with their elementary school classes in tow. And this time, Kiser gets to take a ride.