Mongo used to look after me at the DZ when I was 12 yrs old and on from there. Don't think I have my "Mongo's Marauders" T-shirt anymore. Wore it proudly to school as a teenager.. He was and always will be one of a kind!
Hi Spark, "DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Still tryn' to adjust to losin' Pat a couple of daze ago and now this!! Mongo was a good friend!! 'Had lots of fun dives together. Go over into the "Blast" from the past on Air Trash and check out the 20 year survivors load photo and Mongo is in the back row (I think!!) Mongo is one more in the line up that's gone on.......how many more can you pick out that have left us....are still with us?????
Hi Spark, "DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Still tryn' to adjust to losin' Pat a couple of daze ago and now this!! Mongo was a good friend!! 'Had lots of fun dives together. Go over into the "Blast" from the past on Air Trash and check out the 20 year survivors load photo and Mongo is in the back row (I think!!) Mongo is one more in the line up that's gone on.......how many more can you pick out that have left us....are still with us?????
Three that have left us. Bear, Larry Langrad (sp?) and Mongo.
He was one of the people that put the FUN in Elsinore back in the day, I always knew it was gonna be an 'interesting' day when Mongo pulled up.
Mongo use to do demos quite a bit back then, he was always trying to get me to tell him the 'how-to' and 'where to get' stuff for night pyro jumps...my team had spent considerable time & money researching & developing the act so we kept it rather secret at the time. Mongo would always have some outlandish proposition to offer (or threaten me with) to try 'n break my silence.
The best one was when I took my then girlfriend now wife up the the '3 for an observer ride, Mongo was being espically nice to her and had opened the emergency exit window over the wing for her to look out an see our mass exit...As I'm lining up I see Mongo smoochin' my honey by the window telling her..."and now I'll pass it on to him in free-fall and it's like YOU were there with him!"
We are packing after the jump, the '3 had landed and no girlfriend came to see me...after 20 minutes Mongo says he'd kidnapped her, the ransom was 'one case of pyro' and peanut butter sammich. -turns out he'd given her a bunch of $ and sent her on a beer run...
But my favorite memory of Jim was one fall evening sitting by the open door of the DC-3 next to him during the ride up for a sunset jump, just he & I looking out over the 'Snore mountains quietly enjoying the moment...
...I said reflectively 'kinda puts things into perspective doesn't it', to which Mongo replied~
Today is very special to me, it's the one year anniversary of my wife dying, She was such a lovely woman both inside & out. We had many happy years together and her passing was unexpected...I was with her when she died and I'll never forget her last words to me:
"Mongo... Please Put Down The Gun!"
~His kind don't come around often enough...Blue Skies old friend!
Mongo was a special friend. He alsways had a great smile and as Jim noted, you knew a good time was going to be had when he was around.
I remember watching him cutway from shot and 1/2's just over the Perris manifest at about 300 feet and his round reserve opened at about 100 feet with his feet hitting ground just after line stretch. He bout a brand new re white and blue rig the following week.
I don't think I ever met Mongo, but I sure heard the stories around Cal City when I started there back in the early 90s. In fact, the last photo there looks like it was taken in front of the new hangar at Cal City, before the shop was added to the north side of the building?
) to try 'n break my silence. 
Mongo.jpg
