When I was in my teens, my brother Jon decided to take up the sport of skydiving. I must have been 12 at the time and he would take me with him out the parachute center out in Issaquah, which today is a shopping mall.
For a 12 year old, this was quite the adventure. We would go out every other weekend or so and I would watch all the people jump out of perfectly good airplanes.
Being a somewhat innovative guy, I wanted to get into the action. I repurposed my GI Joes, building scale parachute designs. I would throw them off the roof of the house to see how well they worked. I would bring them out to the jump zone with me and the guys there were pretty intrigued with some of the designs I was coming up with, some that worked well, others that didn’t.
One day my brother offered to give one a real test. He tucked it into his jumpsuit and as he was coming down under canopy, he tossed it out at about 500 feet. Joe eventually landed next to a cow a few pastures away. While the parachute was perfect for throwing off the roof, it was far too big to be used for a real jump (photo is of Joe after his first jump).
After some re-engineering, the new chute was ready. Of course, I can’t do anything shoddy. Mine were exact reproductions of real parachutes, complete with the little pilot chute that had a spring in it so it could pull the main chute out of the pack. Eventually I designed a timer mechanism that would allow him to freefall on his own for about 11 seconds before the parachute opened on its own. Not bad for a kid who had just turned 13.
Unfortunately, Labor Day weekend in 1972 put change all this. My brother drowned in the Columbia River in a parachuting accident. His parachute opened fine, but someone had misjudged the winds. It carried him into the river. He got out of the harness but was swept under by an undertow. I not only lost my brother that day, but my role model and hero.
I continued to go out to the jump zone after that. Jon’s friends there took me under their wing. I guess they knew my heart was broken. They would let me pack their parachutes. Me, 14, then 15, packing their chutes. Looking back, it’s kind of amazing. But I was darned good at it.
At 16, it was time for me to face the demon. I still remember my first parachute jump like it was yesterday. Of course, it helps to have a photo.
Tommy “Tortoise” Anderson was my jumpmaster. At 3,000 feet he had the engine cut and motioned for me to get in the door. The drill was to grab onto the strut of the plane and pull yourself out onto it. Both hands on the strut leaning forward, your foot on a small step about one foot long and three inches wide. The other foot dangled off in the wind.
I felt the slap on my thigh and I let go. I looked up and counted as rehearsed, “One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand.” I could see the plane above me falling away. Except I was the one falling, not it. It was a surreal feeling. But before I could enjoy it, the canopy snapped open and filled with air. I then followed the arrow on the ground, pointing my canopy in the same direction.
The next week was my second jump. The weather had turned some. It was overcast. But the ceiling was above 3,000 feet so off I went again. I did the same drill as before. Everything was fine. At least it was until I neared the ground. You’re not supposed to look at the ground as you will experience something called “ground rush”, where the ground will suddenly start coming at you at 300 feet or so and you’ll try to anticipate the landing, breaking something.
I looked off at the horizon as I had trained. When my feet hit the ground, I could tell I had hit really hard. It turned out I was caught in a heavy down draft, which slammed me into the runway at fairly high speed.
My ankle was in agony. I couldn’t move I was in so much pain. But then out of the corner of my eye, I could see a plane at the end of the runway. It was about to take off and my chute was still billowing in the air. If I didn’t get it pulled in and under control, there was a very good chance the landing gear of the plane would catch it and take it and me for a very unpleasant ride. So I crawled along the runway, pulling in the lines as fast as I could. The plane went right over me at about 30 feet. Scared the crap out of me.
The guys thought I was just playing around. But after I didn’t get up, they knew something was wrong and came out with a van to pick me up. Later at the doctor’s office I was told that I had fractured it enough that it would have been better to have broken it outright.
I would need to be on crutches for the next two weeks. So there I was, the following Monday on crutches. My female friends at school carried my books and everyone asked what had happened. “Ah, nothing, just a little skydiving injury.”
And just for that moment, the nerdy band kid was cooler than any jock or cheerleader in the school. “Skydiving?” they would say. I would recount the adventure over and over, making it sound like it was nothing.
I never jumped again. Neither did the GI Joes. I only used the crutches for two days. They hurt my armpits. The ankle is still arthritic so my diving days were over before they started. But I will remember the days fondly, knowing that I faced the demon that had killed my brother, the day I fell from the sky and didn’t die.
Out on the Treasure Coast, looking to the sky with the same wonder,
– Robb