How Skydiving Changed My Life

It was, as they say, on my “bucket list.” I was 42 years old, at least 50 pounds overweight, and I’d just ended a 10-year relationship that had been anything but good. I needed some excitement in my life. When I walked onto the drop zone on August 8, 2009, I expected to put a check mark by that item on my list and never return.

The tandem jump was awful for me from the beginning. First, when I weighed in, I found out that I weighed 210... Read More

How Skydiving Changed My Life

The roar of the bulldozer was getting closer and closer. It was then that I saw someone coming. The moment he started to yell, I knew I was not going to be lost forever. It was June 1981. I had been discarded in the Sarpy County, Nebraska, dump, near where Lincoln Sport Parachute Club (LSPC) was located at that time. I was certain to be buried until Kenneth “Sonny” Bader saw me. He pulled me out of the pile of garbage and threw me in the back of his... Read More

How Skydiving Changed My Life

October 7, 2007, and May 4, 2008: two dates that changed my world and my life forever.

After she spent a weekend jumping at a boogie in Star, Idaho, I watched as my daughter Michelle boarded Cessna Caravan N430A for her return to Shelton, Washington. I remember Michelle telling me to stop hugging her so much. After all, I was going to meet with her the next weekend when her grandma and I flew to Seattle.

On Monday morning, October 8,... Read More

How Skydiving Changed My Life

As years of skydiving passed, I noticed that my jumpsuits were starting to get tighter. My fall rate became a challenge, and I couldn’t guarantee that I would be able to honor my part of the skydive. But since I was only making six jumps a month, I continued on as if everything were normal.

I always said health was my number-one value. Since I realized the power of measurement and accountability, for years I tracked my intake and... Read More

How Skydiving Changed My Life

Skydiving has changed my life in so many ways. First, skydiving brought Larry and me together. Although we met in college and had been good friends for almost three years, we never dated—that is, until Larry and his twin brother, Gary, became skydivers. One day, I asked Larry to take me with him. So, for our first date, on July 22, 1979, he took me skydiving in Liberty, North Carolina. I did a static-line jump, and Larry did a solo jump. I fell in... Read More

How Skydiving Changed My Life

When I was 16 years old and working as a summer camp waiter in New Hampshire, I was commandeered off a road one day to help fight a forest fire. That day, I saw smoke jumpers jumping in to fight the fire. I thought it was so neat that each summer during college I applied to the smoke jumping school in Missoula, Montana, but, sadly, was never accepted.

After college I went on to play amateur football, ice hockey, lacrosse and baseball and... Read More

How Skydiving Changed My Life

I began this wild and wonderful sport of skydiving like most, by taking a trip to the local DZ on a dare; I experienced the thrill of freefall with a tandem jump. A month later, I made one more tandem and was hooked. My good friend, Angel, and I decided to continue the thrill and step it up a notch by wearing our own rigs. After a year of AFF and accumulating enough jumps, we were skydivers! I felt confident enough in my skydiving skills to invite... Read More

How Skydiving Changed My Life

It was the summer of 2006 in southeastern Michigan. I was barely 23 years old, growing my destination wedding photography biz and in the midst of being a serial dater attempting to find someone who could keep up with my passion for extreme sports. Every date I had was atypical and centered on adventure. Trying to not repeat anything, it was only a matter of time before one of my dates included skydiving.

My date and I met at the local drop... Read More

How Skydiving Changed My Life

As a young U.S. Army specialist fourth class, sitting at my desk in Bad Tolz, Germany, I heard the drone of an L-20 (de Havilland Beaver) high overhead. It was February 1960 and pleasantly mild for a February day in southern Germany. I looked out the window, spotted an aircraft and watched in horror as a body fell out of the airplane! Speechless and affixed to my chair, I was amazed as a bunch of stuff came streaming out above it, and—to my surprise... Read More

How Skydiving Changed My Life

I spent my young life hearing about skydiving from time to time—my father, Gary Fletcher, C-2100, filled my head with stories. I always kind-of wondered what it would be like, but never really gave it serious thought. Then I grew up and moved away from home.

In 1998, my parents asked me to move back and work in the family business. Since my life had slowly been going down a bad path, and I needed to get back on track, I did. In 1999, when... Read More