Blue Skies, Patrick Swayze

To the general public, Patrick Swayze—who died at age 57 this week—will best be remembered for the films Dirty Dancing and Ghost. To skydivers of the day he’ll be remembered for Point Break. And for two reasons. First, Swayze took up skydiving at Perris Valley so that he could film many of the skydiving scenes himself. According to co-star Keanu Reeves, the production company issued Swayze a cease-and-desist order to stop skydiving; he kept jumping anyway. Along the way he joined USPA and earned his A license. Second, the movie’s release in 1991 brought a flood of first-jump customers out to DZs nationwide. Those customers didn’t find skydivers bantering in five-minute freefalls, but many did find a sport of their own as shown by USPA’s membership totals. Membership rose from 20,000 at the end of 1990 to 26,150 in 1992, and steady increases in subsequent years. Thanks, Patrick, for boosting our sport. Blue Skies.

Rising Through the Recession

32,003. That’s the current level of USPA membership at the end of June. What’s the significance? Well, in addition to the fact that membership continues to grow, it’s the first time since May 2005 that we’ve exceeded 32,000. Here’s the full story: USPA membership reached its all-time zenith of 34,583 in August 2001. Then the following month came the attacks of 9/11. Like all of aviation, skydiving suffered for months from a public apprehension and mistrust of all flying. A stalling economy didn’t help either. Membership began a slow but steady decline, going below 32,000 in June 2005 and finally bottoming out in October 2006 at 30,488. Then began a slow but steady climb, and finally back over 32,000 last month. 32,003 is just a number, after all. But it signifies skydiving is holding its own through this recession. And that’s good news for all of us.

Slack USPA bloggers?

Loyal USPA blog readers may have noticed the lack of recent posts lately. We’re not abandoning the blog, and we certainly have no lack of news! We have recently spread our online wings to include Twitter and Facebook, and are still on MySpace and LinkedIn. Those sites, especially Twitter and Facebook, have been more conducive to the kinds of news we’ve had lately – short, quick updates not really worthy of too many words–140 or less, in fact (that’s the maximum number of characters a Twitter update, or “tweet” can be).

It has been great for things like letting people know the SIM pdf is now updated with bookmarks (www.uspa.org/Portals/0/Downloads/Man_SIM_2009-2010.pdf), that there is a new job opening at USPA (www.uspa.org/aboutuspa/employment.aspx) or that Safety Day reports are online (www.uspa.org/USPAMembers/Safety/SafetyDay/2009Reports.aspx).

Those sites also get more activity and response than the blog has, so we’ll spend a little more time there. We will still be blogging when there is a major story that requires a little more behind-the-scenes, personal explanation, or if inspiration strikes! Let us know if you want to read about anything in particular, too – either comment here, or use the “Why” post (skydiveuspa.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/why/) as a forum to ask your questions about why USPA does some of the things it does.

Here are all the places you can now find USPA online:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/skydiveUSPA
Facebook: http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/US-Parachute-Association/55722708148
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/_USPA
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=41846
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/SkydiveUSPA

Jacques-André Istel Presented with the USPA Lifetime Achievement Award

One of the pleasures of my job is to meet and talk with some of our sport’s luminaries and pioneers. I enjoy history, and I particularly enjoy the history of our sport. So maybe you can imagine how privileged I felt last week when I presented USPA’s Lifetime Achievement Award to Jacques-André Istel, the father of modern skydiving in the U.S. See, Jacques, who had immigrated here from France as a boy and had begun parachuting here in 1950, saw on a visit to France in 1955 that French skydivers had learned techniques of controlled freefall. Until he learned and brought those techniques back to the U.S., parachuting in this country was simply flailing between exit and deployment—no arch, no control, no turns, and no stable deployments. There was no skydiving here until Jacques advanced it. He also coined the term, by the way. But he didn’t stop there. Jacques became a vocal advocate for public acceptance of skydiving as a sport, not a daredevil activity. Here’s an excerpt from an August 1957 issue of Time magazine:

” ‘You just let go of the plane and suddenly you’ve changed elements. You start to drop but you don’t feel anything—only a marvelous sense of control. It’s like being immersed in light water. Then you bring your right arm up and you make a turn, just as simple as that. It’s an incredible sensation.’

Thus runs the evangelical message of Jacques-André Istel, 28, a black-browed ex-Wall Streeter and dedicated prophet of parachuting in the U.S. His gospel: jumping….out of an airplane can be a safe, exhilarating sport, not a devil-daring performance…”

That’s not all he did either. Jacques advanced parachute competition, too, by forming the first U.S. team to compete at the 3rd World Meet in Moscow. With that, parachuting and then skydiving competition began to flourish here as well, with Jacques introducing our collegiate competition as well.

For these reasons, and many more, I was humbled yet proud to be joined last week in Felicity, California, (where Jacques is not only the founder, but the mayor) by board members Larry Hill and Scott Smith, previous Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Pat Morehead, previous USPA Gold Medal of Meritorious Service recipient Ted Strong, and many, many skydiving friends, in presenting Jacques-Andre Istel with his own engraved and mounted silver bowl. Like a true Frenchman and skydiver, Jacques used the bowl to toast his admirers…

Jacques-André Istel holds the USPA Lifetime Achievement Award surrounded by (from left) Pat Morehead, Larry Hill, Ed Scott, and Scott Smith.

Jacques-André Istel

We all have different reasons for starting skydiving, but why do we stick around? For me personally, and I know for a lot of you, it’s the people. Unique, eccentric, crazy, loony, loving, wild, different, open—call us what you will, but our sport has some seriously colorful characters. Working at USPA, I’ve been privileged to hear stories of some of the most amazing, starting with the father of modern skydiving, Jacques-André Istel, D-2. You may have read the News blurb about him this week, but his involvement in skydiving is only part of his fascinating life.

Mike Anton of the L.A. Times wrote a great piece on Mr. Istel last April, Desert monument captures history on stone. Read the whole article if you’ve got a minute, but here’s a quick excerpt:

Istel has always zigged where others zagged. He is a tireless wayfarer with an insatiable curiosity and no tolerance for boredom, who has pingponged through life like a character in a picaresque novel.

He fled Paris with his family in advance of the Nazis. He hitchhiked across the U.S. when he was 14. After a stint in the Marine Corps, he chucked a career on Wall Street to take up parachuting – which he learned by leaping from a plane with virtually no instruction. He eventually fathered the sport of sky diving [sic] in America. Later, having grown antsy running a business, he circumnavigated the globe in a twin-engine airplane, at times not certain he’d make it.

In the mid-1980s, he founded the town of Felicity on about 2,800 acres of California desert. He built a marble-and-glass pyramid the size of a large garage and proclaimed it the Official Center of the World; thousands have paid a couple of bucks each to step inside, even though it’s not even the center of Imperial County. More recently, Istel moved 150,000 tons of dirt to create the nearby Hill of Prayer on which he built the Church on the Hill – even though he’s not particularly religious.

“You’ve got to admit, that’s interesting,” Istel says.

Here’s a message from the man himself, to Executive Director Ed Scott, inviting you personally to his USPA Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony:

Dear Ed;

Many thanks. Reno is not possible for me owing to prior commitments. We have a nice program planned for 14 February 2009 at Felicity and I look forward to receiving the award then. Also I look forward to your visit, that of Larry Bagley and hopefully Chris Needels; as well as any parachutists old and new who care to join us. Perhaps someone could read this message at the Reno event..

Merry Christmas and all best wishes,
Jacques

Without Jacques-André Istel, and countless others just as interesting, we’d never be able to throw ourselves out of airplanes for fun. Without them, we’d never want to stick around after jumping was over, either! If you’re anywhere near the Felicity, CA area on Valentine’s Day this year, definitely take the time to attend. Visit the Center of the World, hear some amazing stories and thank the man who fathered our great sport, Mr. Jacques-André Istel.

Nationals Champions

The 2008 Nationals results are up (finally!). Sorry for the delay, but we wanted to take full advantage of the new website to make it a bit more useful than just a static list. I think what we came up with is a nice balance of a quick loadtime and coolness. What’s really interesting is that you can click on any hyperlinked team or name and get the team members, plus any past Nationals medals they’ve won.

For example, clicking on “Airspeed” will give you a history of results for every incarnation of the infamous Arizona Airspeed FS team. Impressive, no?

So far, we only have results back through 2005 in that query system, but the goal is to get them all at least through 2002, when we first started publishing Nationals winners on our website. And, we’ll get all past results over to that cool new query system so you can start clicking away on 2005 and older results soon.

We’d love to know what you think, and what you use that page for. If there’s something you really wish you could do – on any page, not just this one – post a comment on the blog or e-mail us at webmaster@uspa.org.

Parachutist Around the World

We started this section in July 2007, and it has been a runaway hit! We knew skydivers were adventurous, but some of the places you all have been to are incredible.

We have limited space to publish the best ones in the magazine, but they all go on the Parachutist Around the World online feature. Let me just say first of all that “best” means photographically best for print magazine use – clear subject in focus, high resolution and a discernible, recognizable landmark in the background, all visible in a space about 6 inches square.

Since I put them all up on the website, I get to check them all out in detail, and some of my favorites are ones that did not make it into the magazine, or are best zoomed in on a computer screen (hint- click on any picture to see it full-size). So sit back, buckle up and let’s go on a virtual vicarious tour of the world!

Jonathan "Woolly" Charlton, D-25414, chillin' with Godzilla in Japan

Jonathan “Woolly” Charlton writes us about this picture – “Now, I don’t really really expect y’all to publish these (on account of the bizarre landmark), but, in any event, you might find them funny – these pictures were taken out front of the Yokohama Tire plant in Shinshiro, Japan.  The Godzilla was made from varying-sized Yokohama tires!”

I personally found it awesome-ly funny, Woolly, thanks for the great pic!

Jeff Sears, D-25918, and a monkey enjoy Parachustist in the Monkey Forest, Ubud Bali. Photo by Fiona Horne, A-51051.

The best part of this picture is only really visible if you zoom in over Jeff’s left shoulder. Monkey! Reading Parachutist! Maybe we can teach the monkey to sit-fly, too!

Jeff Morgan, D-24891, catches up on the latest in front of Wigwam Village #2 in Cave City, Kentucky. Photo by Bert Morgan.

I’ll be honest, I don’t quite get what’s going on in this picture, but I know that I like it.

Maybe we’ll organize some themes for you next time – Parachutist readers in the snow, on the water, under the water, at work, on mountains, in the military, in spaceships (seriously!) . . . But I’ll leave you with my personal favorite, if only because it’s where I want to be – living on the beach, fishing and popping up to Elsinore to make a jump every now and then:

Ed Duncan, D-37, (right) and Kelso Smith, D-13930, (left), in Ensenada, Mexico, where Ed lives. He also still skydives at Elsinore every time he gets a chance. Photo by Linda James-Smith.

Have a safe and happy weekend!

Skydiving in USA Today

Your vote matters … bet you’ve heard that a lot lately, huh? Well your vote does matter and could help promote your favorite sport! USPA member Scotty Burns’ photo of a wingsuit jump with the space shuttle Discovery launch in the background is one of eight photos being considered for USA Today’s Reader’s Top Pick photo. Wingsuit jumpers include (left to right) Mike Masheff, Mike Swearingen and Douglas Spotted Eagle.

(left to right) Mike Masheff, Mike Swearingen and Douglas Spotted Eagle. Photo by Scotty Burns.

You can vote online once per day here: www.usatoday.com/marketing/brand_mkt/openair/photo_contest/flash.htm

Voting ends September 16, so get out and vote! The winning photo will be printed in USA Today—what a great way to show the rest of the world one part of our sport!

Oh, and watch for the October issue of Parachutist—Douglas shares the details of the jump in Pages from a Logbook.

Looking for a job?

I just heard from Northrup Grumman, one of our summer Parachutist advertisers. They needed a rocket scientist (no, really) and thought they might find one in our readers. He thought they might get at least a few bites, or someone might tell a friend, who’d tell a friend, etc.

The day he got his July issue with the first ad in it, he got 4 interested phone calls. In total, they received 18 qualified applications, about a million times the response he was hoping for! And this for a job that requires 5 years hands-on parachute engineering experience and a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering! You guys sure are smart.

So, if you’re in the market for a new job, don’t forget Parachutist classifieds and ads. You don’t even have to be a rocket scientist to find a great job. Also check out our LinkedIn group, social networking for professionals. But not you, Belinda Serabian, C-35046 – you already landed yourself an amazing job – congratulations and good luck!