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I was drinking with a bunch of guys the night before,
and somebody started talking about skydiving
and I said, I never knew you jumped,
and he said I didn't.
So I said, why not?
I said, the way you talk
you would think you made a lot of jumps.
And he said, I can't get anybody to go with me.
Well, I had had just enough,
I said I will go with you.
The next thing I know it's February,
it's freezing cold,
he shows up at my door at about 8 o'clock in the morning
with a ripped out page from the Yellow Pages
saying I found a place that's only about
an hour-and-a-half from here, we can go out
and take a class early afternoon
and jump at the end of the afternoon.
I mean, I knew nothing about this sport,
however I thought that sounded like a little fast
to be able to do this or whatever.
So we went out to Lakewood Sport Parachuting Center
on February 11, 1965, and thank God,
it was freezing cold
and the Norseman had no door on it,
so the shaking I was able to blame on the colds.
But it was some... and they were very good,
as soon as I landed, and you are so thankful to be alive
and whatever that you are just really excited,
and the first thing they ask you is,
would you like to do that again?
And if you say yes, and then about three minutes
or five minutes later you are like,
what did I just commit myself to?
And I started loving it.
I made 300 jumps in the first calendar year,
got all four USPA licenses;
became an instructor at Lakewood,
did that for a couple of years;
got into competition.
Got barely good enough to qualify
and go to the Nationals,
but then over the years
I think I competed in nine Nationals.
I was able to complete in Style, Accuracy, 4-Way,
8-Way, 10-Way, and Speed, so all the disciplines.
I got seven medals,
and I guess the biggest accomplishment
was being a part of 1977,
and we won the World Championships
down in Gatton, Australia.
So that was pretty much the jumping career,
had about six or seven malfunctions out of 4,317 jumps,
which wasn't bad back in those days.
I would say that I made probably about 3,500 jumps
on round canopies and about the last 900 or
whatever the balance would be to
4317 on square parachutes.
Only one bad accident, which was in 1969,
at Lakehurst Naval Air Station,
and we jumped there,
the Navy invited us in every year,
once a year for sort of fun jumping
and jumping some of their big airplanes.
I think we were going to try and put a 15-way together,
and someone said, well,
why don't you wear some smoke or something?
So I took a smoke bomb bracket and put it on,
and because I am a lazy guy I tied a piece of tape
or string rather to the cotter pin
and ran it up my leg
and taped it above my knees
so I could just bend down a little bit
and activate the smoke bomb.
So I did that, and we went out
and we broke off at about 3,500 feet,
I don't remember how big we got, the star,
and when I went to pull my main ripcord,
I couldn't pull it, I was meeting resistance.
And I looked down and there was the lanyard
that I had tied to the smoke bomb
and it had in the propwash
and going out, it went through the main handle.
So I just really pulled as hard as I could,
and all of a sudden everything went loose.
The other end of it,
it wrapped through the reserve ripcord handle,
because I was wearing the belly
and chest-mount reserve, so both the main
and the reserve took off together
and ended up in a double malfunction wrapped together,
and I had about a third of a reserve out.
They say when I hit,
most of the others were still at 1,500 feet,
estimate was anywhere between
40 and 60 miles an hour.
And the fortunate part was 15 feet off the macadam runway
and into a swamp,
and it had poured rain the night before.
.
Yes, I was taken to the hospital and I partly drowned,
because the water started seeping into this
huge divot I had made in the ground.
And the only thing I can tell you is at 10 o'clock that night
I got out of the hospital
and back to the hangar in time for the party,
with one side of me just
from my shoulder all the way to my foot,
black and blue, because I broke every blood vessel
on the side of it,
but didn't break a bone
and no other injuries other than my left side of my body
was a little gross for a while.
And then six days later I made my next jump.
So that was sort of the jumping history,
the highlight I guess was
being on the World Championship team, Mirror Image,
and I guess low point
would have been that jump at Lakehurst,
but if you can walk away from a landing that hard,
it probably wasn't that bad a jump.
So that's really the jumping side of it.
I got very active in the administrative side of the sport
went out to Monterey, California
and worked as an Assistant Executive Director for USPA.
And then left that job and went with Tim Saltonstall,
and we opened Pope Valley Parachute Ranch.
And our dream was to open a skydiving center,
if you will, that had a bar, restaurant, motel,
so have our own bar, so as skydivers
we wouldn't get thrown out of our own bar.
So we would have our own bar, our own restaurant,
our own motel, swimming pool out back,
patterned after ski resorts or country clubs,
but rather than golf or tennis,
you could fly airplanes upside down,
you could skydive, you could come in there
with a glider and get a toe.
And it was probably five of the most fun years of my life,
running Pope Valley Parachute Ranch,
was very much into competition, and again,
jumped with Mirror Image, and we jumped
and I went back to the administrator side.
And then, while all of this was going on,
I ran for National Director of USPA, got elected,
and served the first two year term
and then the next two year term was elected,
I think it was the second term,
maybe it was a third term,
was elected President of the USPA,
and served in that capacity for four years.
And then did two more years as a Chairman of the Board,
which is kind of the up and out slot,
because the President is the Chief Executive Officer.
And I would like to think that
one of the biggest accomplishments that I
that the administration,
to use a better word,
had was the skydiving community
was a little bit fractured between
style and accuracy and relative workers,
but in particularly the West Coast relative workers.
Well, I am an East Coast guy,
moved out to California,
opened Pope Valley Parachute Ranch in Northern California,
and jumped on 10-man speed teams from there,
went down to Elsinore,
competed against all of the best Southern California teams.
And our team, North Star, held its own.
And then we held our own competition at Pope Valley
and all the top teams from Southern California came up.
So the USPA all of a sudden
seemed to be a little bit calmer.
We put relative work into the National Championships,
starting with 4-way, then we went to 10-man speed stars,
and then 8-way,
and now of course there is a gazillion events.
But the relative workers were happy
they were in the Nationals, and USPA executives,
if you will,
were skydiving on relative work teams.
So now we were one as opposed to being
the bad guy on the other side of the fence.
So my first jump was 1965; my last jump
was my last jump at the World Championships
in Gatton, Australia, 1977.
And came down, and when I did it,
I didn't know it was going to be my last jump,
but I knew that I was getting ready
where I was going to have to go
back to the East Coast and go to work,
I mean real work.
And so all of a sudden we had a very, very good jump,
we knew we were very close with the Germans,
but we thought the jump we had just done
was good enough to win the Championship.
And so there I am flying around
over the beautiful Australian countryside,
with seven of my best friends,
everybody in red, white, and blue
and USA on the canopies,
and hooting and hollering, and just saying,
you know, if we just won the World Championship
with that jump and these seven guys,
what kind of a jump am I ever going to make
that's going to be more fun than this one?
So I quietly went over and packed up my parachute
and said to myself, you know,
I think that might just have been it.
And of course no time to get sad
because we had the party that night,
and next day was the award ceremony,
and we were, we had just eked out
by a couple of points victory over the German team.
.
So I retired.
And it was an absolutely wonderful career.
And then we had... so Bill Ottley had come up
with this idea of building a museum.
And so I was one of the first four Board members,
people that he asked to be on the Board.
And we really didn't do much of anything
for about 20 years.
And all of a sudden steam got picked up,
so staying on the Museum Board,
I guess Lenny Potts and I,
Chris Needels I think as well from the original group
are the only ones that are still alive
from the original group.
And we are bounded in term to get this Museum built.
A lot of guys, as we see here on the Museum weekend,
as Larry Bagley wrote the greatest comments
we have ever heard,
last night at the relative work seminar,
which they tribute to the SCR,
Bagley said, you will notice out on this airport
there is a lot of experience
and a lot of history limping around this airport.
And it does, and you see things like this,
it really gets you motivated before we lose all these people,
and before we all lose the great history of this Board.
And it was a wonderful time for me;
it was probably the best 12 years of my life.
And I love this sport dearly
and I am thrilled to be able to be on the Museum Board,
just to be able to keep a hand in it
and see my old friends.
Well, I would tell them that it really is a sport,
but it's also a thing of absolute beauty.
You always talk about the water and the air
being totally different elements,
and they are different elements,
and you have got to be careful with both of them,
but the enjoyment that both of them
can give you is absolutely extraordinary.
And it's just like the water,
you can go scuba diving,
or you can just wear a snorkel,
or just go splash around in the water,
or you can be a Michael Phelps
and compete for medals and whatever else.
In skydiving, just step out that door
and just say, wow, look at what I am doing,
and look at the countryside,
just by yourself, roll over on your back
and watch the sky go away,
and just enjoy the absolute sensation
and feeling of doing it.
Or you can do individual competition with style
and accuracy, or you can go join a team and do 4-way,
you can do 8-way, you can do all of it.
And if you are looking for something,
as long as you understand
that you are going up into an element
that man wasn't meant to be in,
and you are careful with your equipment,
and you will have just an absolutely wonderful time.
And in all sports,
I am an athletic Hall of Fame from my football,
hockey, and baseball days,
I have never met a greater group of people
that I have in the world of skydiving.
There is just a million pluses to it.
And then you make of it what you want to make of it.
It's almost like somebody saying,
is that a good college or not?
A lot of these colleges,
you will get out of it what you put in it
and you will get a good education.
And the same thing is with the skydiving,
you will get out of it what you put into it,
but it does take a bit of an effort,
it does take a bit of a commitment,
but if you are looking for something exciting,
fun, and to do with good people,
skydiving is it.
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