Millstadt native killed in California dive boat fire remembered as ‘the real deal’

As teenagers growing up in Millstadt, Neal Baltz and Ross Hughes were best friends, doing some of the typical things guys like to do: bass fishing, playing poker, betting on horses at Fairmont Park and drinking beer on farm back roads.

Millstadt is one of those towns where everybody knows everybody, Hughes said, so he and his siblings always knew the Baltz kids.

During his sophomore year and Baltz’s freshman year of high school at Belleville West High School, the two forged a tight friendship. Baltz was even the best man in Hughes’ wedding in 2000.

On Monday, Baltz was one of 33 people killed in a dive boat fire in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara, California. He and his longtime girlfriend, Patricia Beitzinger, were sleeping below deck of the Conception when it caught fire. There were 39 people on board and it is believed that all but five crew members died.

Baltz and Beitzinger were on one of the many trips they had taken together around the world. The Los Angeles Times reported that they had explored Micronesia, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Channel Islands together.

On Baltz’s YouTube page, there are dozens of videos of his and Beitzinger’s skiing and diving trips, as well as some about everyday life—goofing around, bowling and bottling homemade wine.

Though Hughes and Baltz lost touch a few years after Hughes’ wedding, with both moving out of the area, Hughes said he remembers Baltz as “the real deal.”

“If I could just say one word about him, it’s ‘genuine,’” Hughes said in a phone interview Thursday.

Just a day before, he found out that Baltz was one of those killed in the tragic fire that has become national news.

“I was instantly heartbroken, and I had some regrets ... that we had lost touch, that I hadn’t gone on trips with him ...” Hughes said. “I wish I’d kept better track as we got older.”

Baltz was always his own person, Hughes said, never conforming to what was popular, but always making good decisions.

“(Neal) did everything his own way,” Hughes said. “He did it how he wanted to do it. Whether something was right or wrong or whatever, he would own it and stick to it. I could see that’s how he was living his life now and the saddest thing is that (he died) doing what he loved to do.”

While at Belleville West, Baltz was captain of the wrestling team and participated in the Donkey Basketball fundraiser, close high school friend Tim Tialdo said.

Tialdo said Thursday that he remembered Baltz as “super smart” and always joking around.

“He always had me laughing about something and he was that person you could always call on when you needed someone to talk to,” Tialdo wrote in a Facebook post.

Hughes also said Baltz was very technical and that he’d found the perfect career fit as an electrical engineer after studying at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He recalled how one time, when Baltz was a senior in high school, he was involved in a minor car accident and set out to prove that it wasn’t his fault by using physics to reconstruct the scene. Hughes doesn’t remember the outcome, but he recalled how Baltz measured skid marks, calculated the friction generated by the car’s tires against the pavement, and figured out the weight of both vehicles to prove his point.

“That’s just how his brain worked,” Hughes said. “He thought: ‘They weren’t going to pull one over on me.’ That’s just so Neal.”

On Thursday, Hughes said he had talked to another high school friend about Baltz. He said they remembered how fun Baltz was to be around.

“He did what made him happy and what he liked to do and what stimulated his mind,” he said. “He was just genuine.”

A neighbor of Baltz’s in a Phoenix, Arizona suburb told an ABC television affiliate that Baltz and Beitzinger were adventurous.

“I don’t think they’re TV people,” Jack Belt said. “I think they like to travel, save their money, go to exotic places and be outdoors.”

Baltz’s father, John Baltz, told the same station that his son and Patricia “went to heaven doing something they loved together.”

In Phoenix, Baltz was a wine connoisseur, creating homemade wine and taking an enology class at Yavapai College an hour and a half away. According to the Los Angeles Times, he worked in the vineyards and cellars there, sometimes sleeping overnight in his Ford F-150 pick-up truck.

Michael Pierce, the director of enology and viticulture at the Southwest Wine Center, who taught six of Baltz’s classes, told the newspaper Baltz was a goofy guy who kept spirits up during the early mornings of hard physical work in the vineyard. He had endowed a scholarship for the school and given more than $5,000 to help renovate an old racquetball court into a wine-making center.

Authorities in California had recovered the bodies of 33 people who had died in the accident by Thursday, but one person remained missing. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office said crews are using sonar to map the ocean floor, so divers can “target specific areas of interest.”

There were three decks on the boat, which could hold 46 people. The crew members sleeping quarters were on top of the deck, while passengers slept below, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said Tuesday. That lowest deck had two exits, but both were blocked by flames, he said. No one trying to escape was able to make it past the fire.

The National Transportation Board is investigating the boat fire. One of the surviving crew members told the Los Angeles Times that he believes a phone charging station might have sparked the fire.

This story was originally published September 6, 2019 at 5:00 AM.