My First 1,000 Jumps: The Evolution of a Skydiver and the Organization That Became His Life

By Norm Heaton

You are holding the only comprehensive history of the early days of the sport of skydiving yet published. It is the story of not just one skydiver but the story of many, the true pioneers of the sport. Just as important this book includes a complete history of the national organization established for the express purpose of promoting sport parachuting. While this history is restricted to a short fifteen years (1961-1975), those years were the most productive, most far-reaching, and the most exciting for the fledgling idea of jumping out of perfectly good airplanes for the sheer joy of it all, eventually establishing the sport of skydiving as an integral part of the world of aviation sports. This book tells the story of those formative years with details of battles fought to maintain freedom of the skies for all parachutists when government and corporate interests made numerous attempts to severely restrict the right of skydivers to use our nation's airspace. This story is told by a man who dedicated his life to the advancement of the sport, serving for twelve years as the chief executive officer of the national organization for skydivers, the Parachute Club of America / US Parachute Association. The reader will embark on a most exciting journey, a journey not told before, continually laced with personal stories that will touch your heart, make you smile, and occasionally make you laugh. This book contains over 400 photographs and 1,500 names of people from around the world who participated in that wonderful and exhilarating sport called skydiving.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645443971

Book preview

cover.jpg

My First 1,000 Jumps

The Evolution of a Skydiver and the Organization that Became His Life

NORM HEATON

Copyright © 2019 Norman E. Heaton

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2019

ISBN 978-1-64544-396-4 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64544-397-1 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

Getting Started

1–100—Derry Slots, TUs, Waterless Water Jump, B and C Licenses

On to the D, the I/E, and California

New Leadership, Controversy, and Bankruptcy

1965—A New Year, a New Board, PCA in the Black

The End of Our Sport or Our Finest Hour?

1966—Nationals in Tahlequah, Scotty Hamilton Comes On Board, PCA Moves into an Old Whorehouse

With the ’66 US Team (Part 1)—In Training and Behind the Iron Curtain

With the ’66 US Team (Part 2)—Training in Germany, Competition in France

Post US Team Analysis, Getting Used to the Para-Commander, PCA’s Best Year to Date

1967, a Momentous Year (Part 1)—Improving My Accuracy and Style, New Records at a National Championships, PCA Becomes USPA

1967, a Momentous Year (Part 2)—World’s First Ten-Man Star, Relative Work Becomes a Major Force in Parachuting

1967, a Momentous Year (Part 3)—Improving My Style and Accuracy; the Lake Erie Tragedy; USPA Defends Skydiving Once Again in Washington, DC; Off The Wind Line Makes Its Debut

Tahlequah Loses Out, Parachuting Loses Joe Crane and Mark Baron, Heaton Wins a Slot to the Nationals, the Nationals Go to the Desert

Johnny Carson Makes a Jump, the US Team Brings Home Medals from Austria, a Broken Ankle, Norm Jumps in Japan

A Successful Collegiate Nationals, a New Year, a New Board of Directors, a New Film, Norm Attends His First Meeting of the International Parachuting Committee

Hamilton Leaves for Law School, Another Nationals in Arizona, My First Frog Jumping Contest, Rouillard Comes on Board, the US Team in Yugoslavia

R/W Keeps Getting Bigger, MacCrone Elected President of IPC, Norm Gets a Para-Foil, New Licensing and Rating Requirements, an All-Girl Eight-Man Is Made

A Poor Nationals in Upstate New York, Some Directors Create Tension within USPA, US Freefall Exhibition Team Selected Amid Controversy, Two US Teams Go to Yugoslavia

USPA Continues to Improve, a Few Directors Make Attempts to Can Heaton and Rouillard, a Successful Collegiate Championships, New Membership Plan

USPA Has a New Board and New Officers, Norm Finally Makes Number 1,000, the FAA Threatens Parachuting Once Again, the Nationals Return to Tahlequah

Tahlequah to Host World Meet in 1972, US Team Has a Near Sweep at Pan-Am Cup, D. B. Cooper Makes Big Money Jump, USPA Continues Its Growth Pattern

Rouillard Leaves, Bruce Deville Comes On Board, Lyle Cameron Is Removed from the Board of Directors Amid Controversy, Skydivers Participate in Largest Air Show Ever Held in the United States

The Largest Nationals Ever Held, the Most Successful World Championships Ever Held—Tahlequah Becomes the World Center of Skydiving for One Summer

The Wonderful World of Hindsight—An In-Depth Critique of the XIth World Parachuting Championships After Years of Reflection

Changes in USPA Office; Fighting Another (Successful) Battle in Washington, DC; Relative Work Is Recognized by the FAI; New Board of Directors

USPA’s New Board, Tragedy Strikes the Army Parachute Team, the First World Cup of Relative Work, Another Successful Battle with the Feds, Three US Teams Bring Home Gold

Ottley Resigns from Board of Directors, Overcoming Detrimental Regulations at the State Level, the FAA Blackmails USPA, We Lose Dr. Fitch, FAI Approves World Championships for Relative Work, Jacques Istel Removed as Honorary President

A Shortened Nationals, US Team Brings Home Medals—No Gold, USPA Board Votes to Move to Washington, DC (When Finances Permit)

New Board, Another Anonymous Benefactor, Move to Washington, DC Becomes a Reality, Norm’s Last Days with USPA

Heaton’s Personal Heroes of the Sport, Past and Present

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Basic Safety Regulations of the Parachute Club of America (Circa 1960–1964)

Common Modifications to Twenty-Eight-Foot Canopies in Vogue During Late 1950s and Early 1960s

The First 250 Recipients of the US/FAI Class D License as Issued by PCA/USPA

The First One Hundred Gold Wing Recipients as Awarded by PCA/USPA

The First Twenty-Five US/FAI Class D Licenses Issued to Females

The First One Hundred Bob Buquor Memorial Star Crest (BBMSC) Recipients

Super Round Canopies of the Late 1960s and Early 1970s and Early Foil and Delta Canopies

Glossary

Dedicated to my good friend and fellow skydiver, Charles R. Chuck MacCrone, the man who most inspired me to write these memoirs. We were good friends for over fifty years. After retiring as a NASA engineer in the 1990s, he made the decision to attend paramedic school at age seventy-one. He graduated top in his class and worked as a paramedic for the Huntsville, Alabama, EMS for ten years, retiring yet again at age eighty-two. When I inquired as to why he was attending paramedic school at his age, his reply was Life has been good to me, and I feel that I need to give something back. This is most indicative of the type of person he was. I was with him all day just before he died on November 7, 2016, in Pensacola, Florida. As sad as his passing was to me, that sadness is outweighed by the remembrance of our jumping together, partying together, and working together to make a difference in this wonderful, crazy sport called skydiving. He was one of the finest gentlemen I’ve ever had the pleasure to know.

Foreword

In May of 1964, at the end of the academic year at Oklahoma State University (where he was working on a doctorate in education and teaching social science courses), Norman Heaton, a bachelor, former paratrooper, and an active sport skydiver holding an expert parachutist license with instructor rating and a master’s degree in history and education, loaded all his worldly goods into his 1963 Ford convertible and left, heading west for Monterey, California, where he had accepted the job of assistant director for the Parachute Club of America (PCA) for the princely salary of $4,500 a year. At least in my imagination, after carefully placing a wad of Beech Nut chewing tobacco in his jaw, Norm cranked up the radio as he pulled away from the curb, hearing an Army recruiting ad breathlessly proclaim: It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure! Well, he’d already had that particular job-adventure, but thought this new one held similar promise. He had no idea. Six weeks after arriving in California he became the third executive director of the Parachute Club of America, a position he would hold for the next eleven years.

In this epic, carefully researched, and highly detailed memoir, Heaton takes us along on what became a decade-plus adventure, a crucial time of growth, leadership, and high accomplishment for both himself and the organization that became the US Parachute Association. During his tenure, USPA, on behalf of the sport, dealt with fierce internal political intrigues and struggles, faced and surmounted repeated regulatory obstacles and existential threats from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and state agencies, began to form alliances with other sport aviation organizations, developed national standards and programs to improve training and operational safety, and fielded US parachute teams that represented America brilliantly on the world stage of competitive sports, hosting two exemplary World Parachuting Championships in the process. During this period, and nurtured by these efforts of USPA, the sport grew in popularity and in the quality of training, equipment, safety, and professionalism as skydivers explored and expanded the range of their capabilities to accomplish amazing feats in free fall and under new gliding canopies, capturing and exhibiting a burgeoning body of beautiful photographic evidence of their exploits and exposing it to the public eye.

This book traces each step of that route, and along the way, the author names profusely, generously giving credit where credit is due and unflinchingly assigning blame where he deems it due as well, the latter to himself at least as much as to others. As one who worked with Norm during some of those years, I can report that he’s always been like that. You always knew exactly where you stood with him. He never hesitated to deliver a clear performance critique when one was called for. Through that continuing process, this book becomes both a plot-riddled whodunit and a Who’s Who (or at least a Who Was Who) of the sport in that era.

It is rare to find a memoir written by a trained historian who was there and played such a key personal role in shaping the events described. This book is a treasure. It is my sincere hope that it will more fully inform those of us who so love the sport of skydiving about its history and the roles played by so many in bringing the sport to where it is today and will inspire those who followed in Norm Heaton’s footsteps to take up this story from where he leaves off.

J. Scott Hamilton, JD, LLM, MAS

Adjunct Professor and Course Developer

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Worldwide and Prescott Campuses

Preface

These past few years a number of nostalgia stories have been featured in Parachutist magazine, all of which brought fond memories of past years, how I got started in jumping, my progress through those years several decades back, and what it means to me still today. I also find myself reflecting on the changes that happened in that (now) short period of time. The years 1962–1975 were some of the most crucial, historical, and far-reaching as any decade in the history of any organization; it was, in many ways, a wonder to behold. These memoirs will cover those fourteen years in, admittedly, a most selfish manner, the review of a jump log and all the happenings surrounding the first one thousand of my jumps. By today’s standards, one thousand jumps is small potatoes, but few can tell the story of one individual and, much more importantly, the story of a national organization at the same time. I invite you to come with me on this unique journey.

A major reason for writing this memoir is to have a record, not only of my activities but also the workings of the national organization that represents us all, the United States Parachute Association, in those years from the early 1960s to the early 1970s. I have discovered, much to my chagrin, the national headquarters of USPA only has sketchy records of these years; therefore, this will be my attempt to record major events in the early history of the organization, hopefully for posterity. Except for personal opinions expressed herein, and there will be many, all events and actions of the PCA/USPA mentioned in this memoir are based on my personal copies of official records and are so noted throughout this book.

Another, less selfless, reason for this literary attempt is to tell the story of various individuals who had so much to do with my jumping career. Some of these individuals are well-known even today; others are not nearly so well-known as to be called Sky Gods, but all contributed greatly to my experience and to the overall history of our national organization. I want to tell their story as well. Some I consider good friends even to this day, and although they may not be everyone’s heroes of the sport, they are to me. The overwhelming majority of these contributions were positive and enduring. Some are well-known contributions; some are known only to me.

Some individuals mentioned in these pages are depicted in a negative tone and may, in some instances, be incompatible with the opinion of the reader. Yet I cannot gloss over what actually transpired and my reaction to the actions of a particular individual or to a particular group. Neither will I omit my own shortcomings, both as a parachutist and as an administrator. As the New Testament tells us, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Looking at it from a purely secular viewpoint, we are all human and possessed of human frailties. After all, imperfection is what renders man human. Therefore, one might say we’ll look at the good, the bad, and the ugly.

For all the years I served as the chief administrative officer of PCA/USPA, one unwritten law was foremost in my head: if you were against the national organization, you were against me. I always took it personal. Such an attitude might not be business-school proper or politically correct, but that was how it was for those eleven years, and I don’t regret it one damn bit.

And now, as I review my logbooks at this writing, every single jump has a memory attached to it; some are mundane, some have been experienced by nearly everyone in this great sport of ours, some are exciting, and some make up a story in themselves. These are the ones I wish to share with you; we need to take time for our memories, lest we forget too much.

About the front cover: The author in free fall above the city of Tahlequah, Oklahoma. This picture is one of a series of pictures taken by free fall cameraman Chip Maury on a jump in June 1971 just prior to the opening of the ’71 National Championships. The idea was to show me, a native of Tahlequah, with feathers and tomahawk as a symbol of the Cherokee Nation of which Tahlequah is the capital. The Cherokee Nation capitol building was to be in the background, but the haze of that day prevented the building from being clearly shown.

Chapter 1

Getting Started

I made my first jump as a member of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in January 1956. I was nineteen years old when I reported in to jump school after eleven months in the US Army. Within a week of earning my jump wings I was assigned to the 77th Special Forces at Bragg, this assignment lasting less than a week when I was suddenly assigned to the 11th Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The 11th was in the process of being transferred to Germany, and in March of ’56, I found myself in Augsburg, Germany with the 511th Airborne Signal Company. I spent almost two years in Europe before coming home and being discharged on New Year’s Eve, 1957, three weeks shy of three years serving my country.

Almost immediately after my discharge I resumed my college career at Northeastern Oklahoma State College (now University) in my hometown of Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Never was my airborne experience far from my thoughts in those days; I often wondered how I might make another parachute jump. Three years and a college degree later, dreams of jumping again seemed to have faded but never completely forgotten.

After teaching high school history for one semester, and deciding to pursue a career as a college history teacher, I entered the graduate program at Oklahoma State University (Stillwater, Oklahoma) in January 1961. Then it happened! I discovered that there was an active skydiving club on campus! After checking out the club I was somewhat disappointed as I found a bunch of ex-airborne types making sport static line jumps with no formal program for advancing into free fall. By this time, I was teaching at the university and carrying a full academic load, and I decided to sit on it for a while.

In the fall of ’61, a classmate, an Army major, informed me the skydiving club was under new management and the club was training students and putting them on free fall in rapid order. The OSU Skydivers were sponsored by the Army’s ROTC unit on campus, and the man who was the sponsor was a Captain Jack McKee. It didn’t take long for Jack and me to become friends and fellow skydivers.

Captain Jack was a unique character. He was airborne qualified, spent a tour with the Tenth Special Forces in Bad Tolz, Germany, and in the two and a half years we worked together with the club I never knew how many jumps he had. He never kept a logbook to the best of my knowledge; at least I never saw one. He went strictly by the rules, and that meant the PCA Basic Safety Regulations (the BSRs are reproduced in Appendix A), you joined the Parachute Club of America (predecessor to USPA), and all jump students underwent at least forty hours of ground school before the first jump, which included packing your own rig before your first jump. (Believe it or not, we actually had drag recovery in the notorious Oklahoma plains’ winds out on the football practice field.)

I fell right in with his program, and before long I was training students at his side prior to making my first sport jump. I joined PCA for the first time in October of 1961, and unbeknownst to me, all memberships, back then, expired at the end of the calendar year; however, if you joined after November 1, you got the remainder of that year, plus the following year. (Shoulda waited another month!) I’m proud to say that I have just entered my fifty-sixth consecutive year as a member of our organization. In 1961 membership dues were $9.50, and if you wanted to forgo the PL/PD insurance, you could join for seven bucks. A lot of the military members opted for this type of membership.

Captain Jack was also a world-class scrounger. About seventy-five miles down the road from Stillwater sits Tinker Air Force Base just outside Oklahoma City. Tinker AFB is one of the Air Force’s largest bases, and one of its missions was the gathering and disposal of used equipment. Under used equipment, it was discovered that parachutes were given time duration before they were sent for salvage. The fact that these parachutes had never been used made no difference; they had passed their expiration date. They were sent to Tinker AFB for disposal, which basically meant they cut off the suspension lines and sold as scrap. Captain Jack had an arrangement with certain people at the air base, and when parachutes were available, he’d go down with an Army vehicle, gather up canopies and other parachute components; these would then be assigned to the Army ROTC unit at Oklahoma State. At the time of my joining the club there were fifty to sixty new C-9 canopies (with B-4 harnesses and B-12 backpacks) in the clubhouse storage room and eight T-7A twenty-four-foot reserves! We did not have an equipment problem.

Our rigger was also Jack McKee. He modified all the canopies with the various configurations in vogue at the time—Derry slots, Double Ls, Ts, 5-TUs, 7-TUs, etc. This was all accomplished on his wife’s portable Singer sewing machine. (See appendix B for these various configurations.) For the heavier work, such as sewing D rings on the harnesses, he performed by hand with a hand awl.

Let me pause here and discuss a little about parachute equipment in the early 1960s. With very few exceptions, almost everybody jumped with military surplus equipment, the main reason being is that was about the only thing available. For several years, from the late fifties to the early sixties, there was only one equipment dealer that sold commercially made parachute gear, that being Parachutes Incorporated (PI), the business set up by Jacques Istel and Lew Sanborn (D-2 and D-1). Even then, the variety of gear was very limited. It was also expensive when compared to military surplus gear. It was in the mid-1960s before you had other large dealers, such as Para-Gear and the Chute Shop. There was only one commercially made and marketed canopy made at that time, the 1.6-ounce porosity 28-foot canopy from Pioneer Parachute Company in Connecticut. When I started jumping in 1961 there was only one of these canopies in the entire state! I remember it well; it belonged to our area safety officer, Jerry Roth, and it was the first canopy I had seen that wasn’t a solid white C-8 or an orange-and-white C-9.

The deployment sleeve was a godsend to all of us in those days, as a lot of the first jumps in my club at school were done flat-wrap, the suspension lines being stowed directly in the container just as with any emergency parachute. The opening shock of canopies packed in this manner would discourage the faint of heart. Then someone in the state, again I think it was Jerry Roth, came up with a true-to-goodness deployment sleeve, one made by Pioneer. This changed things for the better, easier packing and milder opening shocks. Just about everyone had a copy of the sleeve and our in-house rigger, Captain Jack, turned them out by the dozens on his handy-dandy Singer portable sewing machine. I still have one sleeve that he made back in 1961 although it hasn’t been jumped in fifty years. Even our altimeters were military surplus, the big and heavy things that came out of aircraft; I used one for years. If one experienced a hard head-down opening, these things tended to punish your face as your instrument panel was located on the top of your front-mounted reserve!

If one looked in any issue of Parachutist or Sky Diver magazine prior to 1964 you would find that 90 percent of equipment advertised in those publications was military surplus. The big equipment dealers at the time were Broadway Surplus, Volume Sales Inc., and Ben’s Surplus, all out of Southern California, and McElfish Parachute Service out of Dallas, plus Midwest Parachute Sales and Service located in Novi, Michigan. One example of an ad appearing in the May 1964 issue of both Parachutist and the June issue of Sky Diver magazine for Broadway Surplus offers a complete rig, which included a twenty-eight-foot orange-and-white canopy, B-4 harness, rip cord, D rings (attached to harness by FAA-approved riggers), plus a twenty-four-foot rollpack reserve, all for $79.80 plus shipping (there was no handling charge in those days). If one wanted a customized canopy you could get a C-8 canopy dyed by professional craftsmen in three glorious color choices (royal and navy blue, cobalt blue and rust, or solid diamond black), all for the low sum of $49.90 (plus shipping).¹ The other two equipment dealers mentioned carried similar ads with competitive prices. This was what average skydivers had to choose from in those days. One of the great boosts for me was being in a club that basically got free gear because of our affiliation with the Army ROTC unit at Oklahoma State University and Tinker AFB.

One sad note in discussing these equipment dealers was that during the 1965 Watts (California) race riots in August of 1965, several thousand surplus T-10 twenty-four-foot reserves were destroyed by fire, one of approximately three hundred businesses that were burned to the ground during these riots. The warehouse in the Watts area was owned by either Volume Sales or Broadway Surplus; I can’t recall which one.

Zippered jumpsuits were rare in those early days; most everyone had a set of Sears or J. C. Penney white carpenter’s coveralls. A few people had French boots, so-called because they were made in France and were the first boot supposedly designed for parachutists. The official name was the Paraboot Competition and sold for $29.95 (plus shipping). When I started skydiving, I still had a fairly new set of Corcoran jump boots from my days in the Airborne. I had the brilliant idea of taking off the regular soles and adding one inch of hard foam rubber; these boots put me through 250 jumps, and after two broken ankles they were retired when I went to the style version of the Paraboot, which was lighter and more flexible. After close to 500 jumps, I finally wised up and started jumping in lace-up moccasins with solid soles or tennis shoes. Of course, this was after I had obtained a Para-Commander and shitcanned all my surplus canopies.

Jumpers of today have little or no idea of what we went through in the early days of skydiving. We used surplus equipment because it was the only thing both affordable and available; we had to modify the equipment to suit our needs, and our progress was often slow as the only experience we gained was on our own. Thankfully, this was an era when everybody tried to help everybody else, which was very prevalent in a club atmosphere. Just about all the jumpers with whom I had contact in my early days strove to gain a PCA license; this was a major milestone in our progression. It took time and effort just to qualify for the Class B License (twenty-five free falls) as there was not an overabundance of jump aircraft available and what was available was normally the four-place Cessna, and the number of DZs was limited.

Chapter 2

1–100—Derry Slots, TUs, Waterless Water Jump, B and C Licenses

McKee informed me that my airborne experience would cut two sport static line jumps off the required/recommended five. Our drop zone at the time was the municipal airport in Cushing, about thirty miles from Stillwater. Every weekend for the next six weeks we went to the DZ, and I did not make a single jump; it was either overcast or the winds were in excess of what was safe for students. Finally, on my birthday, December 21, 1961, I made my first sport static line jump. My jumpmaster was Jack McKee; the aircraft was a Cessna 175, owned and flown by Jim McMahan, the FBO at Cushing. My parachute was a C-9 canopy with Derry slots as a modification. I was able to land on the airport.

I made a second jump the same day. Because of Christmas break at school and final exams in mid-January, I did not make another jump until January 30, 1962. My third jump was my second dummy rip cord pull, and according to our bible at the time, Russ Gunby’s Basic Handbook of Sport Parachuting, one’s last (or third) dummy rip cord pull and one’s first free fall had to be made on the same day. It was too late in the day for another jump, so three days later I made another dummy rip cord pull and then made my first free fall, a jump-and-pull. This momentous event occurred on February 2, 1962.

Cushing, at the time, was one of the focal points of jump activities in the state. Our OSU club considered it our home DZ, but we were often visited by members of the Tulsa Para-Divers and the Sooner Skydivers out of Oklahoma City. The most experienced jumpers in Oklahoma at the time were members of either the Para-Divers or the Sooner club. I should say the most experienced civilian skydivers as there was also a military club at Fort Sill. Two of these experienced jumpers were Jerry Roth (C-657) of the Sooners and Dave Woolsey (C-734) of the Tulsa club. Both these guys were very instrumental in making these early days of sport jumping in Oklahoma a success. At the time of my first jump Roth was the only area safety officer in the state, although Woolsey was appointed ASO around ’63 for the eastern half of the state. These two were the first (civilian) Class D License holders in Oklahoma, Roth, D-306, and Woolsey with D-463. Jerry, an employee of Aero Commander located in Bethany, Oklahoma, at the time, worked as a volunteer airframe and engine (A&E) mechanic man at the VI World Parachuting Championships in Orange, Massachusetts, in 1962. I remember well the many stories and helpful tips brought back from the world meet. It was also the world meet in which another Oklahoman, Jim Arender (D-13), became world champion. If there was such a thing as sky gods back in 1962, Woolsey and Roth fit this category!

My progression through various delays and altitudes was fairly uneventful other than I suffered a broken ankle on my eighth jump. I was in a cast for three weeks and three days. It wasn’t very long until I broke my foot, and this, believe it or not, was a hard landing on a water jump! What I should say, on an attempted water jump, jump number 22. Jack McKee made all the arrangements to conduct a water jump into Boomer Lake just outside Stillwater. This was an impoundment of approximately one hundred acres and served as the reservoir for the city. We brought our jump plane over from Cushing and loaded at the Stillwater Municipal Airport, just two miles from the lake. I was running the ground and water pickup crews and was in the last load to jump. The last load consisted of me and Martin Zizzi of Tulsa who had recently progressed to ten-second delays. We made individual passes over the lake, and I spotted Zizzi out on his jump. After he opened, I noticed a yellow J-3 Cub circling him, which more than concerned me. I asked our pilot to see if he could contact the Piper Cub, but his attempts were futile. We made another pass, and I got out. After checking my canopy and attempting to put my reserve into a plastic bag to keep it dry (for some silly reason), I spotted the J-3, and it was, in my agitated state, awfully close. I turned and ran with the wind to put distance between me and the yellow peril, and in a space of a few seconds I was no longer over water. A round canopy with Derry slots and a T modification will not put you back on the wind line. The next thing I knew, I was in the picnic area of the park around the lake, and to miss a couple of structures I hit downwind in the middle of the asphalt road winding through the park, resulting in the loss of one tennis shoe (stuck in the hot asphalt) and my arch being fractured in five places. This brings us to the rest of the story.

After I collapsed my canopy and shucked my gear, I got into my car and drove to the airport with steam escaping from my nostrils. Limping into the FBO I discovered several guys sitting at a table drinking coffee. I demanded to know who the dumb SOB was flying the J-3 around the lake. One confessed to be the culprit, adding something along the lines of dummies jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. I punched him with everything I had, and his office chair with wheels propelled him a few feet before crashing into the wall. I then proceeded to kick him with my shoeless foot. To this day I don’t know if the fractures to my arch were the result of the landing or the incident at the airport office. I tend to consider it a nonparachuting accident. The worse thing that happened to me after this incident was that I discovered that the pilot I clobbered was an associate professor of aviation with the OSU Aviation Department. This put my job as graduate teaching assistant in some jeopardy. After some serious discussion with my boss in the History Department and the dean of the graduate school, no action was taken against me so far as employment was concerned although I was severely chastised. The really unfortunate result was that the OSU Skydivers were not allowed to jump on campus for another two to three years. I didn’t think too much about it at the time as we had never been allowed to jump on campus to start with; although it did affect the club in those years after my departure.

Once more I found myself in a plaster cast and the school term was fast coming to an end. A sidelight on having a cast and on crutches was that I was in Oklahoma City visiting an orthopedic doctor about the breaks in my arch and after the appointment I had some time to spare and drove over to Bethany to the Aero Commander factory where Jerry Roth worked as an airframe and engine (A&E) mechanic. Hobbling up to the front door of the plant office a nice gentleman opened the door for me. That gentleman was Arnold Palmer who was in the plant to pick up an Aero Commander he had bought.

I had a job waiting for me in Montana on a Minute Man missile site, but the injury prevented me from making the trip, so I enrolled in summer school at Northeastern State College in Tahlequah for the summer session. Sometime in late June I got out of the cast and was ready to jump again. At the time, there were no nearby drop zones, so I had to figure out a way to get in a few jumps. The solution was two doors down from my parents’ home. Dr. Carl Mahaney, an optometrist in Tahlequah, had a Cessna 170, and he was an experienced pilot. He agreed to take me up for a few jumps. As it turned out in a week I made seven jumps out of Dr. Mahaney’s 170, jumps 23 through 29, all 20-second delays from 5,500 AGL. He seemed to get a bigger thrill out of flying me aloft than I did getting back in the air!

Summer school ended, and I headed for Montana for the job I had been promised although I’d only get to work about a month, but I needed the money and I thought I might luck out and find a place to jump. As it turned out the company I was working for, Morris-Knudsen out of Boise, Idaho, had a Bell H-19 that made weekly trips to the construction site in Lewistown, Montana. The pilot was very accommodating, and very early one morning I made two thirty-second delays out of the H-19. This made me eligible for my PCA B license, and the first thing I did when I returned to school was have my ASO, Jerry Roth, sign me off for the B. I was issued B-1482 in September of 1962. I became the second member of the OSU Skydivers to obtain a license as R. E. Dick Smith had been issued B-1287 earlier in the year.

The club and I resumed jumping at the Cushing Airport, but a move was in the making. The airport manager, Jim McMahon, had been offered the manager’s job at Stroud, about twenty miles south of Cushing. Stroud was a small town halfway been between Oklahoma City and Tulsa on the Turner Turnpike and had just built a new airport. So the club adopted Stroud as its home DZ, and we were soon joined by the Tulsa Para-Divers and the Sooner Skydivers out of OKC. What, at first, seemed ominous on my first jump at Stroud, a night jump that the club had planned for weeks, resulted in my first malfunction. What caused it, I don’t know, but I had twenty-five blown panels in my main after opening. (A rather hard one I might add.) I deployed my reserve without incident, cut away the main, and landed safely in one corner of the airport. We did not carry a pilot chute in our reserves and were trained to hand deploy the reserve. Captain Jack’s hand-sewn D rings held up just fine by the way.

With three exceptions, my next thirty jumps were performed at Stroud. I made jumps number 40 and 55 back at Cushing, and I can’t remember why we returned to Cushing for these jumps. The one I do remember was a jump with Dick Smith (B-1287) at Harvey Young Airport in Tulsa on January 27, 1962. It was below zero on the ground and bitter cold when we exited the C-172 at 9,400 feet AGL. This was a Dive for Dimes benefit for the March of Dimes in Tulsa and was televised on one of the Tulsa TV stations. This was jump number 64 and was signed off by another participant in the skydiving, Ron H. Shaw (C-987). My memory fails me as to who he was or where he came from. The person who signed off my next jump was Allen Wayne Steiner (C-399 and D-518) whom Jerry Roth later described as the only quiet and smart guy in the Sooner Skydivers.²

Jumps 69 through 74 were conducted at Fairview Airport in Fairview, Oklahoma, sponsored by the Enid Skydivers and the club at Vance AFB. I got to meet some very experienced jumpers at this meet including Dusty Rhodes (D-206) and SFC William Gene Ritchie (D-256) from the Fort Sill Sport Parachute Club. I am pleased to say that I maintained a long friendship with Gene Ritchie after that initial meeting. During the meet, I placed fourth in the night accuracy event, and the three-man team of Vic Bastian, Hal Sundauhl (B-1605), and me placed second in the team event, resulting in the OSU Skydivers taking the overall team trophy, the first in the club’s existence.

Jumps 80 and 81 had special significance in that they were the first jumps out of an aircraft other than a single-engine Cessna (with the exception of the two helicopter jumps in Montana).

The Sooner Skydivers had arranged for a D-18 Twin Beech to come to Stroud, and we made 2 loads to 12,500 feet AGL. I can’t remember who spotted these loads (it wasn’t me!), but my logbook shows my distance to target as two miles on jump 80 and too far to measure on jump 81. These two jumps qualified me for the PCA Class C License. I was issued C-1138 in April of 1963. Later, I discovered that Hector Nunez of California was issued C-1137 on the same day. Hector was an outstanding style and accuracy man, attended numerous nationals, and a man I considered a friend for all my years in California.

Chapter 3

On to the D, the I/E, and California

I finished the school year at the end of May, accumulating 102 jumps by this time. I then headed to South Carolina for a pipeline job for the summer. We were headquartered in the small town of Abbeville which, as my luck would have it, had a small airport with flyable (and jumpable) aircraft!

There were four aircraft on the airport, a Piper Cub, Super Cub, a Tri-Pacer, and a Navion. In a one-man air show on the Fourth of July, I jumped out of three of them!

An interesting sidelight of my stay in South Carolina: My job was as a swamper (helper) on a ditching machine. One day we broke down, and my operator sent me to fetch the master mechanic who was usually found up and down the pipeline repairing equipment. Driving down one of the many dusty roads the pipeline crossed, I spied a black kid about ten to twelve years old dragging a parachute behind him. I stopped and asked where he got the parachute, and he said, In a cotton field over yonder. I offered him five dollars for it, and he took it and then told me his cousin had one just like it. So I took the time to acquire yet another T-10 reserve. I discovered later that the Eighty-Second Airborne Division had pulled some maneuvers in the area a night or two before and had a lot of equipment lying around. Anyway, I finally had my own reserve as the ones I had used before had been club property.

The job being over in South Carolina, our pipeline crew was sent to Pennsylvania in late July. On my way to Pennsylvania, I jumped with the Orangeburg SPC in Orangeburg, South Carolina. There I met three experienced skydivers with whom I would maintain an acquaintance for many years, Woodrow Woody Binnicker (C-892), Hal Baxter (D-284), and Bobby Frierson (issued D-911 in April 1965). I also met C. E. Copeland (C-700) who repacked my reserve on July 22, 1963. I also got in on a three-way baton pass with Copeland and Baxter, my very first such accomplishment.

I make it to West Chester, Pennsylvania, where the pipeline crew would be headquartered. I immediately set out to find a DZ or jump club. My first Sunday off on the job, I went to the nearest airport and was in luck when I was told that there were skydivers that used the airport for taking off but the DZ was located at a horse race track in Newtown Square, a small town just west of West Chester. I hung around, and finally a few skydivers drove up awaiting their jump plane. I introduced myself and discovered that I was one of the few people they had met that had more than fifty jumps. The jump plane was a Stinson108, which I believe is called a station wagon. They were preparing to drop static line students, and upon inspection of the student gear I became concerned. Their static line was about five feet long for one thing, and I didn’t like how it was attached to the main. As it happened I had one complete student rig with me with a military slide-snap static line.

The jumpmaster, who had few jumps, asked if I would take charge of the students, and I agreed to do so. I ran all of them through some refreshment training to determine how much training they had. All seemed to have the basics down to my satisfaction. I wound up jumpmastering four static line students that day, and on the last one I took the plane to altitude to make a twenty-second delay. I wound up making six jumps into that racetrack and jumpmastering several students over the three weekends I was in Pennsylvania. The club using the racetrack only had one licensed jumper, a Bob Sheridan, B-1531. The one student that I remember well was Charles Chuck Henderson, a long-haul truck driver who went on to get his D license in January 1967 (D-1475). I had been executive director of PCA for a little over two years by then, and I was proud to have been the one that issued the license.

It’s September, and I was back in Oklahoma, back in school, and the OSU Skydivers had a new sponsor as Captain Jack McKee had moved on to his next assignment, being sent to South Korea during the summer. Our new faculty adviser was an NCO, Staff Sergeant Bob Adamson, who had never made a jump of any kind. He was placed in our first training class and became an enthusiastic student. I am proud that he progressed well and advanced right on up to his B license before the school year was completed.

I’ll pause at this point and explain a few things. The first is that the overwhelming majority of my early jumping was done at the club level; there was no such thing as a commercial parachute center in Oklahoma or the surrounding states. There were seven parachute clubs in the state at the time: the Sooner Skydivers, Oklahoma City; the Tulsa Para-Divers; the Vance AFB Club, Enid; the Enid Skydivers, Fairview; the Ada Skydivers, Ada; the Army club at Fort Sill; and my club, the OSU Skydivers. Each club had its own training program, although there were few differences from one to the other; although I would say that the OSU club had the most strenuous of them all, about forty hours per student. We even had a tower that we built among the girders of the OSU football stadium. We had miles of bungee cord, the big stuff, and we practiced exiting the aircraft. Everything was geared to the four-place Cessna, which was about the only aircraft available to any club in Oklahoma. Each student was outfitted with a harness and reserve and pushed off one of the girders and fell about twelve to fifteen feet; we even practiced dummy rip cord pulls this way. It turned out to be a great training device.

Because of my background at the club level, I feel I was more cognizant of all the aspects of skydiving. I trained, or helped train over two hundred first-jump students in my three years with the OSU club. I did the overwhelming majority of jumpmastering students up to their ten-second delays. It was a requirement in our club, and most of the other clubs, that you learned how to spot yourself by the time you reached ten-second delays. This was not the easiest task for some jumpers, especially when the wind conditions in western Oklahoma were not gentle the majority of the time.

All students made a minimum of five static line jumps, including three dummy rip cord pulls before being put on freefall. Almost all our students were able to attain free fall on their sixth jump; I can only think of one or two that made more than the mandatory five static line jumps. We were fortunate in that we had eight or ten of the military slide-snap fastened S/Ls.

During the time Jack McKee was the club supervisor at school, members of the club would gather at the McKee home and watch the TV series Ripcord. This was the one night that interfered with my schoolwork! Little did I know at the time we watched the TV show that within two years I would have become acquainted with all the people responsible for filming and jumping in that show. Para-Ventures Inc. out of California filmed the first two years of the series. Para-Ventures was a company owned by Dave Burt and Jim Hall and their main employee, Bob Sinclair. (Sinclair, D-272, was inducted into the Skydiving Hall of Fame in 2015 posthumously.) The second crew filming and jumping the last season of the show was headed up by Lyle Cameron with Bob Buquor, Don Molitor, Doyle Fields, and Leigh Hunt (and several others). The shows were filmed mostly at the Lake Elsinore DZ owned by Larry Perkins (D-327) and his parents, and later at the Taft DZ owned by Art Armstrong (D-336).

Most of the basic lessons we had in the club came from Russ Gunby’s Basic Handbook of Sport Parachuting. Other, more advanced lessons came from such people as Jerry Roth, our ASO in the state, as he had been a volunteer who worked at the VI World Parachuting Championships in Orange, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1962; a little bit of knowledge picked up from Jim Arender, world champion in 1962; from the more experienced jumpers out of Fort Sill, such as Gene Ritchie, mentioned previously; and from other traveling skydivers who dropped by our DZs and passed on their experiences. There were two skydiving publications at the time, Parachutist (not so much a magazine as a newsletter), the official publication of the Parachute Club of America, and Sky Diver magazine, published by Lyle Cameron out of Los Angeles. Both these publications were devoured by most of us in the OSU club. The more popular of the two publications was Sky Diver as it was generally more informative on things happening in the world of skydiving. Starting in late ’62 and early ’63, Parachutist began to rival Sky Diver as it continued to improve with each publication.

Both of these publications regularly mentioned three regional parachuting organizations: the Mid-Eastern Parachute Association (MEPA), the Texas Parachute Council (TPC), and the Cottonbelt Parachute Council (CPC). The organizations were made up of all the parachute clubs (and centers) in a particular region and/or state. It was my idea to form such a regional organization for the clubs in Oklahoma. Letters were written to each of these three organization requesting copies of organizational charts, bylaws, etc. The TPC was most helpful and sent the requested material. At the time, Dr. Ed Fitch was the president of the TPC. He would later become the president of PCA/USPA for two terms and chairman of the board for two terms. This was the start of the idea of the Oklahoma Sport Parachute Association. There will be more about this subject a little later.

In some ways, the demise of the parachute clubs is unfortunate as there was certain camaraderie among members of a club, or that was my experience in jumping with all the clubs in Oklahoma. Recent issues of our magazine, Parachutist, list about two hundred affiliated DZs in the United States but only three or four affiliated clubs. I guess I’m prejudiced as my first three years of skydiving was in a club situation.

The remainder of the fall of ’63 found me with two milestones: the major one was that I finally made a genuine water jump (number 134) into a large farm pond adjacent to the Stroud airport, and I completed my first logbook of 150 jumps on October 26. During the period of time several individuals whom I started jumping with and several of my jump students received their licenses; the ones I remember to this day are Hal Sundvahl, B-1605 and C-1324; Tom McFeeters, B-1733 and C-1485; Jerry Stephen, B-1732; Jack Neiggemyer, B-1531; Martin Zizzi, B-1975; Ken Edens, B-3186; and Jon Moore, B-3187. Hal Sundvahl graduated from OSU with a degree in architecture, and McFeeters graduated with a masters in chemical engineering and went to work at the plutonium facility in Rocky Flats, Colorado. I got to visit once again with McFeeters at Rocky Flats in the summer of 1991, and we relived some of experiences with the OSU Skydivers. Vic Bastian, who never applied for a license but could have qualified for at least a Class C, jumped with our club in competitions as an ad hoc member. He was a disk jockey at KRMG Radio Station in Tulsa and later news director for the same station. It is interesting to note that the Sooner Skydivers had a disk jockey also, Terry McGrew (C-1213), a regular on WKY in Oklahoma City. (I remember driving from California going east and picking up the clear-channel WKY as far away as eastern Arizona just so I could listen to McGrew. He was one crazy and wild DJ.)

Jumps 151 through 192 (with five exceptions) were all conducted at Stroud, our home drop zone. Three of the five jumps were performed at Ponca City at an air show where we demonstrated student static lines jumping and I made by first flag jump. The other two jumps were during an air show in Chickasha. Jump number 185, at Stroud, was signed off by Edward R. Rose, B-2042, who was an instructor pilot at Vance AFB in Enid and later a U-2 pilot flying missions over Cuba out of Arizona. Ed, many years later, became president of POPS.

February 13, 1964, found me in Dallas to take part in a regional PCA meeting and to take the written exam for the new Instructor/Examiner Rating. At the end of 1963, PCA had announced they were completely revising the requirements for the Instructor Rating. The new rating was to be called the Instructor/Examiner Rating. To be eligible for the rating, one had to have a D License, an FAA Senior (or Master) Parachute Rigger License, have trained and jumpmastered X number of students and passed a comprehensive written exam. PCA published a list of written materials that should be studied if one was interested in taking the test. This same list was published in Sky Diver magazine as well.

It was also announced that during the first quarter of 1964 the then executive director of PCA, George Gividen, and the editor of Sky Diver, Lyle Cameron, would be making a tour of the country and at each stop on the tour would administer the written test. The third stop on the tour was Dallas (after stops in Los Angeles and Phoenix). Since I was so close to the D license, the only thing I had to do to obtain this new I/E rating was to obtain an FAA senior parachute rigger’s license and pass the written examination. Being in graduate school and involved in hours of study, I set aside so much time each day to study the materials for the test. I also went to the Tulsa General Aviation District Office of the FAA to start the paperwork for the rigger’s license.

At the meeting in Dallas, besides meeting Cameron, Gividen, and Dr. Ed Fitch, PCA’s vice president and Southwest Conference director, I became acquainted with Bobby Crump, an old-time jumper in Texas, and his wife, Tee Taylor Crump, D-462 (latter Tee Brydon). Tee was about the fourth or fifth woman to be awarded the D license. I also got to meet members of the Dallas Skydivers, including Jerry and Sherri Schrimsher; Martha Huddleston, a young lady on her way to a D license; and Hank Brawley. As it turned out, Tee Crump was women’s world champion before the end of the year; Martha Huddleston became a national champion and a member of several US parachute teams; Sherri Schrimsher became president of the US Parachute Association in the 1980s; and Hank Brawley would serve as Southwest Conference director for two terms, 1965–’68.

Jumps 193 through 200 were at Fairview where once again we were having a meet hosted by the Enid Skydivers. Two eventful things happened during the meet. One, I got to meet some young men from the Air Force Academy; then I got to meet two more experienced skydivers, Dennis Clark (D-367) and Norton Smith (D-129). The OSU Skydivers took home the team trophy again!

The biggest thing that happened at the Fairview meet was the formation of the Oklahoma Sport Parachute Association. All the clubs in the state were represented, and after two evening meetings we started the OSPA. I was elected as president; Lew Watson, a lawyer and jump pilot from Ada (B-1909), was elected vice president; and Pat White (B-2733), also from the Ada club, was named secretary. I believe that Pat White was the first female skydiver in Oklahoma; I am positive she was the first woman to earn a license in the state.

After the Fairview meet, I only needed five more jumps to qualify for the Class D License; two of those jumps had to be sixty-second delays, and these were made on jumps number 201 and 202. On March 4, 1964, ASO Jerry Roth signed me off for my D, and I shipped it off to PCA headquarters in Monterey, California. I was issued D-565 on March 23.

Jump 209 was made at Poteau, Oklahoma, for an air show, and I got to jump with George Gus Gutshall, D-217. Gus was an Army NCO and was stationed at Fort Sill at the time. We maintained contact for a great many years after this initial meeting.

Although I did not know the results of the I/E test for another few weeks, I was notified that I had passed the test and was, in fact, the first person to do so. It is ironic in some ways that the second individual to pass the I/E test was my very first assistant director at PCA, J. Scott Hamilton, who was in the Army at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, at the time. I became aware that I had to seriously concentrate on getting my rigger’s ticket. In this endeavor, I was helped by Don Boyles, who had a master rigger’s ticket and a member of the Tulsa Para-Divers. Boyles would later be the first man to jump from the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado, this on September 7, 1970.³ I would assume this made him one of the pioneers of BASE jumping.

I had set up a rather large air show for the Stillwater Airport, having gotten the cooperation of the OSU Aviation Department, the FAA, and the airport manager. Invitations were sent out to all the clubs in Oklahoma and to clubs in Texas. Several members of the Dallas Skydivers were present, and it was a shame that they had to travel so far to what turned out to be an absolute disaster! The winds were in excess of twenty-five miles per hour, gusting to thirty. Only one jump was made that day, and I was the fool that made it. Quoting Jerry Roth again, when reminded of the jump I made, he said I landed halfway to Kansas.⁴ That was jump number 214, and it was signed off by Tee Crump (D-462). The unfortunate thing about the air show being winded out was that I had made several financial commitments I had to make good, commitments that were to be paid out of gate receipts. As a result I had to go to the bank and borrow two hundred dollars and hock my Winchester model 94 .30-30 (pre-1964 model worth about five hundred dollars today) to meet these commitments and to pay my telephone bill as the telephone company had cut off my phone for failure to pay approximately seventy-five dollars. It took me another six months to pay off that loan.

The rest of the spring of ’64 was very eventful for me—passing the I/E written exam, starting on my rigger’s license, obtaining my D license, and getting hired as an assistant director for PCA. The national organization, located in Monterey, California, needed a replacement for the current assistant director and put out notification they were accepting applicants. I submitted my resume and application in late April or early May. Just before I was notified I had obtained the position, I had a serious accident; I broke my leg in three places on jump number 220 on May 2.

I had arranged for three of us to make an exhibition jump into Midway Downs, one of three legitimate horse racing tracks in the state, located in Stroud. This was to be for opening day of the racing season. The two jumpers with me were Martin Zizzi and Ken Edens, two of my students through the years. I dropped the wind drift indicator at 2,500 feet, and it landed about 300 feet from the center of the racetrack, our intended target. After a 30-second delay with smoke, we opened and found ourselves in wind conditions not indicated by the WDI. By a thousand feet I was no longer over the racetrack and was fast headed into the residential area of Stroud. I turned to go with the wind (I’m jumping a C-9 canopy with a 5-T/U cut) to clear some power lines and found myself headed straight for a house. Thinking I could save myself serious injury I raised my feet and went into the kitchen window, ending up with one leg and foot on the kitchen table! Unfortunately my left heel struck the windowsill prior to entry and broke my leg. I extracted myself from the window and fell on the ground with my canopy ensnared in the TV antenna. The man of the house came out with his young son, took a look at me, then at the orange-and-white canopy partially inflated on his TV antenna, scratched his head, and said, I was wondering what happened to my TV reception. After expressing my regrets for messing up his Saturday evening entertainment, I asked that he call an ambulance as it was obvious that my leg was broken. About that time Ken and Martin appeared, unhurt, as one had landed in the horse paddock, the other in the street close to me.

While I was recuperating in the Stillwater City Hospital, a Baptist-run entity that I was kicked out of because I knocked a male nurse on his butt for telling me I would have one leg shorter than the other from