About two dozen Milwaukee kids inflated the 100,000 balloons that are currently sitting on the ceiling of Fiserv Forum.
Those balloons will be manually dropped Thursday night as former President Donald Trump wraps up the last words of his speech.
Treb Heining learned how to tie balloons quickly and started his business in the 1970s. Fast forward to now, where he's working his 10th Republican National Convention. He's also done five Democratic National Conventions.
For these events — as a former band kid himself — Heining says he usually goes to a high school program, preferably a local school band, to ask if they would like to be a part of the process of inflating thousands of balloons.
He then returns the favor and writes a check for their program.
Watch: Meet the man behind all those balloons at the RNC.
He says the kids he invited to help him at the Convention are "Milwaukee Ambassadors." They use a valve to inflate the foil and mainly latex balloons, tie them, and then they're tossed in a funnel that fills a net.
"As we get closer and closer my dad used to say it gets hard to breathe. I get nervous about making sure that it goes right, that we get all the people in the right places and it goes right. But it's very exciting.. You're standing up there and President Trump starts to speak. I never really hear the speech that much until after," Treb says. "When I watch the tapes and everything I'm just like, 'Okay. I know I have a copy of the speech in front of me so I know I have the time.' I get the standby cue. 'OK, everybody ready? Standby! Get ready for cue one and seven!' And then I get it from Phil — 'Ok, Treb. Let's go!' And then you go through the pace and then you're watching and then you go through the next cue and you're watching and by the time I'm done you can bring out my suit."
As for cleanup tonight, Treb says once the music stops, usually people start having fun with it — throwing the balloons around and popping them. Crews will then clean them up.
Fun fact — Treb was part of the 1982 Grand Opening of what was then known as the Grand Avenue Mall in Milwaukee. We now know that as 3rd Street Market Hall and The Avenue.
See all of TMJ4's Republican National Convention coverage here.
It’s about time to watch on your time. Stream local news and weather 24/7 by searching for “TMJ4” on your device.
Available for download on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and more.
