Skydivers sue over mid-air crash
TWO student skydivers who plunged to the ground after a mid-air collision during a training jump are suing the company that was teaching them how to parachute. Christopher Charles Morton, 33, was in hospital for four days and off work for six weeks after the accident, which also involved Michael Richard Warren, 26, at Picton, south of Sydney, on December 14, 1997.
Mr Morton and Mr Warren are suing Sydney Skydivers Pty Ltd in the NSW District Court, claiming the company was negligent by failing to ensure its employees were adequately trained and that it failed to exercise due and proper care for the safety of its students.
Their barrister, Andrew Morrison, SC, told Acting Judge Clifford Boyd-Boland it would be their case that the system for novice skydivers put in place by the company was "thoroughly unsafe".
Mr Morrison said the pair were "some significant distance above the ground" when they collided and fell.
Mr Morton, a master of the Sydney Harbour tall ship Bounty, suffered a fractured pelvis and injuries to his right shoulder, spine, head and severe shock.
Mr Warren, a former coalminer, received fractures to his right arm and injuries to his spine, head and severe shock.
Mr Morton told the court a friend, his girlfriend and he had decided to buy each other skydives for Christmas presents that year.
He said that after a day of training he went up in a plane to do his first jump with several instructors and fellow student Mr Warren, who was then doing his third jump.
They were to aim for a cross marked on the ground and were directed by instructors moving large arrows and using batons to show them which way to turn.
"I thought I was doing really well because I was coming up to the cross," Mr Morton said.
But he said when he was about 30 metres from the ground and while watching his instructor, who was also on the ground, he and Mr Warren collided.
He said his canopy collapsed and he hit the ground.
The company is being sued under the Trade Practices Act, with Mr Morton and Mr Warren alleging the services supplied by the company were not supplied with due care and skill.
The company's barrister, Greg Curtain, told Judge Boyd-Boland there would be evidence Mr Morton and Mr Warren failed to follow instructions to watch the "target assistant" on the ground and that Mr Morton went in the opposite direction to the way he was directed.
Mr Curtain also said there would be evidence that there was nothing wrong with the way the company's operation was carried out.
The hearing is continuing.
Flirting with danger, skirting the law
Anthony White of Ottawa is a base-jumper who leaps from tall buildings at night to avoid the law. Next month, he'll be in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur to compete in an event that begins on the roofs of the world's tallest buildings, the twin 1,483-foot Petronas Towers, and hopefully ends safely on the streets below with the aid of a parachute. White is one of 50 base-jumpers, including another Canadian, Lonnie Bissonnette of St. Catharines, Ont., who have been invited to compete in the international event.
"It's quite the rush," says White, a 21-year-old waiter who has heard many shocked voices coming from the balconies he has passed in his numerous descents. "It's a thrill to me when you explain what you do and people shiver."
To participate in the extreme sport of base-jumping, participants need somewhere to jump from, and it should be at least 300 feet high, although White swears he has jumped from many structures that are considerably lower. High-rise buildings, bridges and even cliffs will do. Once a base-jumper kicks off, he or she attempts aerial gymnastics before pulling the rip cord on the parachute.
However, except for sanctioned events in North America, base-jumping isn't considered legal. In Canada, base-jumpers can be charged under provisions of the Criminal Code with mischief and/ or trespassing.
So, to practise his sport, White has become a Batman of sorts, taking to the tops of Ottawa-area buildings in the middle of the night, when traffic is minimal and police are less likely to be alerted.
Although White won't disclose the locations of his jumps, he says there are a dozen suitable buildings around Ottawa, with the 333-foot Tower C of Place de Ville being the highest. White says he normally jumps from an Ottawa building once a month and has also jumped from buildings in Toronto and Montreal.
This past weekend, in preparation for Kuala Lumpur, White and Bissonnette jumped from eight buildings in Ottawa and Kanata, all after midnight.
While it takes a particular type of individual and plenty of sky-diving experience
To become a base-jumper, White acknowledges that getting to the sites is a part of the challenge. Some buildings provide access from stairwells to the roofs, but most don't.
"I've climbed up the outside of buildings, I've climbed balconies," he says. "Different buildings require different methods. There's security in lobbies and elevators you have to get around. Some of it is common sense. The trick is to blend in and go late at night."
For all the inherent dangers of base-jumping, White and Bissonnette say they never cut a lock or damage property for the sake of a jump.
"If we start going into buildings and taking crowbars to locks, that's not good for anyone and that's not going to help us out," says Bissonnette, a 36-year-old who lays ceramic tile for a living. "If anything, what we do is simple trespassing. To do anything else is breaking and entering. Our saying is: We take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints.
"Some people might think it's cool to take something as a momento, but then you cross the line into a theft thing. We want positive exposure for the sport."
See JUMP on page D3
White and Bissonnette say they've run into some trouble with police. Reaction from police officers, they say, varies: Some have called them irresponsible, while others have congratulated them for their nerve and skill.
The two are optimistic that, if the sport gains positive media coverage, as opposed to being mentioned only when a fatality occurs, it will gain acceptance in the same light as other extreme sports. They hope sanctioned events in Canada will soon be here.
There have been horrific accidents. This month, a 27-year-old female base-jumper from San Francisco died when her chute failed to open completely after she leaped from a cliff near Rome.
White is well aware of that accident, and says base-jumpers must be aware of all the dangers. He says he never jumps before going through an extensive mental check-list of what can go wrong and how to cope in any given situation.
"Yeah, people die," White says. "It could be anything. It could be the deployment of the chute, but it's rare now that it's the gear. Usually, it's human error, but I think about it every day, every time (I jump). The fear has to be there, it should be there. Otherwise, you're in for a big surprise one day.
"There's wind, there's how the parachute opens, there are lots of things that can happen. It's very unforgiving. (The danger) is always there, but mentally you have to prepare for all the scenarios and rehearse everything that can happen. It's not a hangover-friendly sport."
Parents Penny and Ron White admit to having occasional sleepless nights when they discovered the nature of base-jumping, but say their concerns have eased because of the safety preparations that go into each jump. Besides, given the nature of their son -- who, as he was growing up, found mainstream sports such as baseball, gymnastics and competitive swimming to be boring -- they recognized they couldn't talk him out of jumping.
"He came home from a skydiving course when he turned 18, and he said, 'I've found what I've wanted to do my whole life,'" Penny White says. "This base-jumping came from sky-diving. I would have never thought that sky-diving was rather safe, but it is compared to this."
Base-jumping has similarities to sky-diving, but few experienced sky-divers try the other sport, primarily because of the risks. For example, a sky-diver has the luxury of a backup parachute if the first one doesn't open, and more time to handle bad situations if they arise.
White, who has 650 sky-diving jumps under his belt, was discouraged from base-jumping when he first tried to get involved. He admits to much trepidation before his first jump.
"I bought the equipment, I assembled it and I researched it on my own," says White, who also teaches sky-diving part-time and has tested equipment for the military. "After jumping off a (radio) antenna and experiencing far too much radiation, I got calls from some people. They knew I was serious."
White was steered to the Bridge Day Festival in Virginia, a conference of base-jumpers and every October home to one of the few sanctioned events in North America, where he met Bissonnette. White claims his craziest feat came there: five somersaults before deploying his chute, two seconds before impact. It was a performance that helped earn him an invitation to Kuala Lumpur.
In addition to trying to find jumping spots in the Ottawa area, White has jumped from bridges in Shawinigan and from the tallest windmill in the world, in Grandes-Bergeronnes, near the Gaspe.
After that, White picked up notoriety within the sky-diving community for an appearance on Outdoor Life Network, scampering out of a glider in mid-air and performing stunts alongside the plane.
Bissonnette has been base-jumping for five years, three years longer than White, but stops short of calling himself White's mentor. Instead, he says they jump together because they share the same personality. Still, he says, being experienced helps in dealing with younger jumpers.
"I might have been in a similar high-stress situation and said something doesn't seem right, and talk about what I did in that situation, but that doesn't mean it's right for everybody," says Bissonnette, who says he won't base-jump with anyone who hasn't performed at least 100 sky-diving jumps and fails to show an incredible aptitude.
"It's not just a single skill you need. First of all, you have to have the kind of personality to do it. You have to be able to think under severe stress. When you jump, you have to have all your senses heightened. You have to think fast, knowing how to handle every situation.
"There are not a lot of people who can do that when their life depends on it. It's not like we walk up to a site and just jump off the edge. You have everything playing through your mind, you have to look at objects from a whole lot of angles."
Obviously, when base-jumpers look at buildings, radio towers and bridges, it's not for the architecture. Instead, the structures represent the potential for the next great jump into the unknown.
"It's a personal challenge," White says. "I guess it's a way of helping you conquer your fears all the time."
Edmonton skydiver dies in first jump
Beiseker, Alta. Witnesses looked on in horror as a skydiver plunged to his death in a parachuting accident Saturday night during his first-ever jump. "We saw the parachute spiralling down and then we hear a loud pop," said a 19-year-old witness, who also had just finished his first jump at the Skydive Ranch, which operates out of the Beiseker airport, about 50 kilometres northeast of Calgary.
"It's something you don't want to see on your first time out."
An air ambulance was called to the scene about 7:40 p.m. but declared the man dead on arrival.
RCMP Constable Wayne Greaves said there was no initial indication of equipment failure.
He also said it wasn't confirmed whether the man actually died from the impact, and that there will be an autopsy.
Jim Mercier, tandem instructor with the Skydive Ranch, said the man hit the ground hard at the end of a jump in which he opened his parachute with no problem.
But during the last part of his dive, he began a "hook turn," said Mr. Mercier, who witnessed the accident while acting as a radio controller on the ground.
"In the last 100 feet, he did a 500-degree turn," Mr. Mercier said. "A hook turn is when you pull down on the toggle and spin vigorously around."
But another witness who asked not to be identified said the man seemed to be spiralling close to a one-storey airport building on the ground.
"It looked like he was going to smoke that building," said the witness, adding that he looked like he was turning to try to avoid a collision.
In July, 1998, first-time skydiver Nadia Kanji, 18, died at Beiseker when she abandoned her main parachute and activated her reserve chute too late.
Last September, Jean-Guy Meilleur, 30, died after he attempted a hook-turn landing at a Calgary Parachute Club event near Drumheller, Alta.
The Skydive Ranch has adopted improved safety regulations since the high-profile death of a Calgary man at the site eight years ago.
Kerry Pringle, a 29-year-old accountant, plunged to his death on his first parachute jump in August, 1993.
A lengthy fatality inquiry into his death assigned no blame to what was then called the Calgary Skydive Centre for the tragedy.
But a series of recommendations were made by a Calgary provincial court judge including leaving a larger margin of safety when setting automatic activation devices on parachutes.
Aerial Photographer Killed in Florida
PENSACOLA, Florida. (AP) - An experienced aerial photographer plummeted 11,000 feet to his death Thursday after his parachutes became entangled and failed to open.
John Foster, 37, was videotaping a skydiving instructor and a student when his main parachute became entangled with his reserve chute, and both failed to open.
He landed in a field in Elberta, Ala., and was taken to a Pensacola hospital, where he died. He had head and leg injuries, a hospital spokeswoman said.
The chutes getting tangled was a freak accident, said Pat Stack, who works for Emerald Coast Skydiving and was the drop zone manager for the jump.
"It's just not something that happens," she said.
Stack said Foster had made 6,000 to 7,000 jumps and often was hired to record other divers' jumps.
"He jumped all the time. He loved the sport," Stack told the Pensacola News Journal.
Buttman 'fly' says law society
Grahamstown, South Africa - Candidate attorney and naked skydiver James "Buttman" Reilly, 36, was officially cleared of any impropriety by the Cape Law Society on Tuesday. Reilly has also received an extraordinary apology from the partner of the lawyer who lodged a complaint against him.
South East Cape Attorney's Association president Raj Daya called the society's decision a "victory" for the profession. "The overwhelming support James got from within the profession shows that lawyers are not a bunch of stiff boards," he said.
Reilly's competition-winning leap into freezing air - naked but for a stick of deodorant taped firmly to his manhood - won him a small car in a radio competition for the zaniest act two weeks ago.
The society said in a statement that James's act was irrelevant to his application to become an attorney.
After considering a report, Cape Law Society president David Macdonald released a press statement yesterday saying: "The Council took note of the fact that the media reports at the time presented the incident as indeed, no more than a stunt or prank; that there was no sense of public offence reflecting on the attorney's profession as such."
The partner of the lawyer who complained to the society had personally sent James a note apologising for his partner's actions.
"I really appreciated that," said James, adding that he "never doubted" the law society would reach a decision in his favour, but still felt "relieved" when it arrived. - ECN
Previous article....
Buttman's wings clipped
07-24-2001
Grahamstown, South Africa - Naked skydiver and candidate attorney James Reilly, 36, has been temporarily barred from entering the legal profession after an unnamed Port Elizabeth attorney lodged a formal complaint that his stunt was "improper".
Reilly's jump into minus 12 degree air 4km above here last week won him first prize in 5fm radio station's Speedstick Give-it-Stick competition for the whackiest act.
Reilly won a new Peugeot in a blaze of national and regional media coverage. News photographs of his naked backside flying through the air earned him the nickname "Buttman".
However, Reilly, who was due to be admitted as an attorney at the Grahamstown High Court on Thursday, will now have to wait until the Cape Law Society has properly investigated the complaint.
A highly upset president of the PE branch of the SA Attorney's Association Raj Daya said the law society was obliged to deal with the complaint and a committee has been set up to investigate the matter and advise the society whether Reilly's behavior was improper. Daya said: "It is ridiculous that the matter reached the law society."
He said what Reilly had done had injected some positive energy into a profession that was suffering from "terminal cancer".
'We had one big laugh about it'
"He (Reilly) discussed the matter with me beforehand and asked whether I believed any problems could result. I said 'I hope you win the car'."
On the day Reilly's stunt was publicised in the media, Daya had been attending a conference in Knysna together with the law society's president, director and other senior members of the profession. "We had one big laugh about it."
"All that is happening now is a procedural issue due to this complaint. This attorney (who issued the complaint) should go for a ride with James in his new car. I think it's a matter of sour grapes. I am terribly upset that it has reached such a ridiculous stage.""
He felt that if Reilly was not be admitted to the roll of attorneys, the law society would be "seriously misusing it's powers.
"James is not fresh out of university. He is an honorable person respected and held in esteem by his colleagues. His stunt has won the hearts of the public at large and not admitting him would be stretching the moral code a bit too far.
"There are much more serious allegations on a daily basis. The law society should be using its time to investigate issues of a much more serious nature."
Cape law society director Susan Aird said the matter was to be tabled before a council meeting on Monday. Aird said she could not express any personal opinion. - ECN
Skydiving wish inspires jack-of-all-jobs aircraft
The first year's production of a new plane built by Hamilton-based Pacific Aerospace is sold out. The maker of military training and topdressing planes last night unveiled the PAC 750XL at a gathering which included Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton.
The company hopes the new plane will become a multimillion-dollar export earner. It is expected to generate $20 million a year in sales.
Staffing will have to expand by nearly 50 per cent at the company's Hamilton Airport base to cope with the new aircraft, which will be in full production within a year.
The first 10 have been sold to United States skydiving operations, and the Australia Army is also interested.
Pacific Aerospace managing director Brian Hare said the 750XL would be capable of fulfilling roles undertaken by the New Zealand Air Force's Iroquois helicopters in East Timor.
Operating and maintenance costs would be well below those of the helicopters.
Other uses include sightseeing, and there are plans for a floatplane version.
General manager Graeme Polley said the 750XL was based on the Cresco topdresser, and could lift two tonnes of freight or carry up to 17 skydivers or nine passengers.
The single-engined aircraft, which will cost just over $2 million, has short take-off and landing capability and can use unprepared airstrips.
Mr Polley said Australian Army officers had been to Hamilton to look at the aircraft.
Able to cruise at 150 knots for five hours with nine passengers, the turboprop-powered plane is expected to make an impact in remote areas in First and Third World countries because of its landing capabilities.
It also has a high climb rate - it can carry a full load of 17 skydivers to 14,000ft in 12 minutes.
Ultimately, the production rate will be one a month, and Pacific Aerospace hopes to make 10 in the first year.
However, a driving factor in meeting demand would be getting trained staff, Mr Polley said.
Pacific Aerospace needed another 20 sheetmetal workers to meet demand for its existing aircraft types, he said. A further 20 to 25 staff would be required for the new plane.
Pacific Aerospace employs 100 staff and has an annual turnover of $25 to $30 million. That is projected to increase to up to $50 million once the 750XL is in production.
Mr Hare said inspiration for the new plane came during a discussion "over a beer" in 1999.
An American visitor, impressed with the Cresco, told Mr Hare it was too bad that it could not be adapted for skydiving.
"By February 2000 we had plans on the drawing board," Mr Hare said. "But as the design evolved we realized that the 750XL's performance characteristics would be such that it would meet a lot of other needs as well."
As well as the Cresco, Pacific Aerospace makes the Fletcher topdressing plane, and the Airtrainer basic military training aircraft, which is used by the RNZAF and other air forces.
The company already makes components for Boeing 777 and 747 planes, as well as for the Airbus A330 and A340 and the McDonnell Douglas F18 Hornet jet fighter.
It has produced components for the Anzac frigates and United States Marine amphibious armoured personnel carriers.
American Woman Dies in Italian Alps
ROME (AP) A 27-year-old woman from San Francisco died Sunday after her parachute failed to open fully during a jump in the Italian Alps, news reports said. Erin Aimee Engle plunged to her death on Mount Brento while base jumping, an extreme sport in which people jump from cliffs or other fixed objects using parachutes.
Mount Brento is one of the sport's most popular and dangerous locations. Engle was the fourth skydiver to die on the mountain since May 2000. The last incident took place two months ago when a Belgian jumper's parachute did not completely open.
Engle's boyfriend, whom authorities would not name, immediately jumped after her in an effort to revive her, the ANSA news agency said. She was pronounced dead at a hospital in Trent, the main city of the northern Italian region of Trentino.
Skydivers Closer to Free Flight on a Wing and a Flair
MARINA, Calif. -- There he was, high above Monterey Bay, a yellow speck rocketing across the gauzy sky. Birdman was tracing a line due east, maybe 100 mph, following the braided shoals of the Salinas River. The ground was approaching at about 60 mph. Graceful from afar, close-up he looked like a flying squirrel in an Elvis get-up. Mark Lichtle had jumped out of a plane at 12,900 feet and was trying to soar two miles inland before deploying his parachute. For a minute and a half, the 42-year-old skydiver kept gravity at bay, moving forward much faster than he was descending toward that famous dark soil of Steinbeck country.
Mark Lichtle: Featured Photographer
Mark's Galleries
Lichtle is one of a growing flock of jumpers who wear wing suits. Designed by BirdMan International, the suits keep humans aloft with nylon wings that extend from the wrists to the hips and inflate as air starts to rush into them. Another wing, like a bird's tail, connects to both legs.
"It's like slow-motion skydiving," Lichtle said. "You can stay up longer and go farther. The wing suit has allowed us to feel as close to flight as possible."
Since they became commercially available in 1999, BirdMan suits have given skydivers a new rush, and provided a new impetus to base jumping--hurling oneself off buildings, bridges and cliffs.
Lichtle is a retired mortgage broker from San Jose who films other people enjoying such adventures, often while jumping himself. Recently he leaped off a tower in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and in Mexico he jumped 1,200 feet into a cave called the Basement of the Swallows, which itself could swallow the Empire State Building.
Wing suits are for experts only. The company recommends that a skydiver perform at least 500 parachute jumps and then take special bird-flying instruction before putting on wings. Although there is an emergency mechanism to cut away the wings, the diver's arms are very restricted while flying. "It's like skydiving handcuffed, and your head is your first point of contact with anything else," Lichtle said.
Vladi Pesa, a BirdMan dealer and wing suit instructor, said that once students learn to control the suit, it revolutionizes their diving. They can do loops and barrel rolls and carve across the sky as if it were water or snow. "It completely changes the flight path," Pesa said. "You can do formations, flying like a flock of birds. You can double your free-fall time."
Skydivers have long experimented with artificial wings and were called birdmen. In the mid-20th century, the practice was akin to jumping from a plane in a cheap Batman costume. From 1930 to 1961, according to Birdman International, 72 of the 75 people known to have tried such stunts died.
The problem was, and still is, that skydivers need to be stable when they deploy their chutes. If some homemade wing has you spinning like a fan out of control, you're history.
In the 1990s, skydivers began experimenting again, this time with wings that had no hard parts and were easier to keep in control.
A Frenchman named Patrick DeGayardon got it right--for a while. He performed successful wing jumps until 1998, when he tried to sew a little pillow beneath his parachute to get rid of a pocket of dead air behind his derriere. Unfortunately, he sewed the chute itself to the pillow and didn't try to deploy it until too late. He plunged from life to legend.
About that time, a Finn named Jari Kuosma came up with the idea of a commercial wing suit. A Croatian friend designed it, and BirdMan International was born in 1999. It has sold about 1,000 suits, ranging from $600 to $1,000. Kuosma has been trying to tinker with designs to slow down the speed of descent even more, allowing birdmen to swoop up and for a moment, maybe, achieve zero vertical velocity.
"We are getting very close to zero," he said. "I am going to land this thing without a chute one day."
Hopefully, not like the 72 others.
Kuosma said he slowed the downward speed to 10 mph on one flight, whereas a normal skydiver falls at about 120 mph before throwing the chute. Others say birdmen haven't gotten much slower than 40 to 60 mph.
On a cool summer day, with a briny wind coming off the bay, Lichtle suited up at the Marina Airport, an aging corrugated affair with old barracks and ragged windsocks. He harnessed himself into the six zippers and shuffled like a penguin to the runway. He wore a helmet--aptly designed by the Bonehead company--shaped flat like Frankenstein's skull, on which he mounted his camera.
"Birdman!" an onlooker shouted, as an instructor explained the wing suit concept to curious students.
Soon after the plane lifted off, the other skydivers on board jumped out right over the airport. Lichtle told the pilot to drop him a couple miles away at the coast. He wanted to see if he could get back to the airport on his own wings.
He has to get used to his new suit, which is for advanced divers and "a little twitchy." Still, because he is more streamlined through the air, the sensation is a lot smoother and more liberating than regular skydiving. "You don't have the hard wind on your body," he said.
He leaped alone over the beach and, at first, fell like a rock. Then in several seconds, the air went through the vents of his wing, and floom, they inflated. He was aloft, aiming roughly for a rusted water tower at the airport.
But up at 12,000 feet, a strong head wind was blowing off the land. Lichtle was going about 100 mph into the wind and hurtling down about 65 mph. He watched his altimeter and studied the oaks and artichokes below. Flatbed trucks tooled along the farm roads.
He realized he was not going to reach his goal and threw his chute at about 3,500 feet, still a quarter mile west of the airport. He drifted east with the wind and spiraled down with the other divers, undaunted. An eagle he wasn't.
Still, Lichtle was unruffled. "This is really the closest you can get to a bird."
Chuck Parsons - A Life Lived in Flight
PEPPERELL -- Shortly after Ann Parsons saw her husband hit the ground while practicing a new skydiving move, she saw him do exactly what they learn in training: roll. "I thought, 'Oh my goodness, he's going to be sore tomorrow,' " she said.
But Charles G. "Chuck" Parsons, a 41-year-old Groton resident and noted nuclear physicist, would never regain consciousness.
'A LEADER': Skydiving was just one of Charles Parsons' passions. A noted nuclear physicist, he invented many scientific devices, several of them patented.
PHOTO COURTESY CHAD GRONBACH
After remaining in the intensive care unit at University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester for three days, his family decided to take him off life support Tuesday evening and donate his organs.
Witnesses to the Saturday accident said Parsons, an experienced sky diver, miscalculated the depth of an advanced move called a "hook turn," which involves spinning around 180 degrees at a low altitude and steering downward to catch speed.
"It was horrible," said Dennis Ducharme, a 30-year sky diving veteran who witnessed the accident from the ground at Pepperell Skydiving Center. "It was just plain horrible."
Ducharme said Parsons should have attempted the move at a higher altitude. Parsons was also experimenting with a new, faster type of parachute. Weather did not appear to be a factor, according to police reports.
A wake will likely be held Saturday at the Badger Funeral Home in Groton, and Parsons will later be buried in his hometown of Canton, Ohio.
Parsons, who moved to his Ames Road home in Groton four years ago, had owned his own company, Catenary Scientific, for the last eight years. He had invented many devices, several of which were patented.
"He was the most brilliant person I knew," said his wife, who is the head librarian at the Lawrence Library in Pepperell. "This will be a big loss to the physics community."
He formerly worked at Bedford-based Niton Corp., where he developed improved technology for measuring lead in lead-based paint. Ann Parsons said her husband was working on several other projects that would have benefited the field, as well as the community at large.
Parsons held bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees -- all in the field of physics. Her earned his doctorate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
But there was more to Parsons than sky diving and physics -- he loved just about everything, his wife said.
"He was passionately into to every facet of science and the environment," she said. "He could crawl under the car with you and repair brakes, and in the next minute talk physics with world-renowned scientists. He was a very special person."
His friends agree.
"He was a leader," said Chad Gronbach, a close friend and sky-diver. "He had a very large heart. He was someone who always went out of his way for someone else."
Gronbach, Parsons and three others formed a sky-diving team called Burning Daylight -- a team that Parsons put together two years ago, members said.
The team hasn't decided yet if it will remain intact. At the time of the accident, members were training for the U.S. National Skydiving Competition this fall -- the largest of several sky-diving competitions that take place throughout the year.
Parsons started sky diving about 20 years ago, but gave it up when he began school and his career. When he and his wife moved to Groton, she treated him to a tandem jump at the nearby Pepperell Skydiving Center for his birthday.
After that, she said, he was hooked.
Even though the sport eventually took his life, Ann Parsons said she's glad her husband did what he loved. Participating in the sport improved his life both physically -- he lost 60 pounds in the last year -- as well as emotionally, she said.
"He sky-dived the way he lived his life -- passionately," she said.
When Parsons took the sport up again in 1998, he earned his Accelerated Free Fall license, which is needed to jump alone. In all, Parsons had about 920 jumps under his belt.
The sky-diving community is very tight-knit, and news of the accident spread across the nation via e-mail almost immediately after the accident.
Those involved in the sport say it is generally not dangerous, despite its seemingly risky nature.
Paula Philbrook, vice president of the Pepperell Skydiving Center, said there are about 15,000 jumps a year at the center. Minor injuries such as twisted ankles are not uncommon, she said, but serious injuries are rare.
The center, located at Pepperell Airport on Nashua Road, has been open for more than 30 years.
According to the United States Parachute Association, there were 3.4 million jumps made in 1999 and only 27 fatalities. The percentage of death in other sports, such as scuba diving, skiing and flying, is much greater, according to statistics.
There are strict rules and safety regulations that each sky diver must complete before jumping, said Philbrook, who also knew Parsons well. Those who receive a license must complete a seven-jump training and safety course.
Friends said Parsons was a very safe sky diver, and always took precautions.
"He was very safety-conscious for himself and the people around him," Gronbach said.
"He was always full of smiles, a very happy man."
Buttman flies again
Grahamstown, South Africa - There was mirth and amazement when a naked skydiver landed on the Grahamstown army's parade at 8am yesterday morning. Unfazed, the first words Port Elizabeth candidate attorney James Reilly, 36, shouted to the 100-odd soldiers were: "Reporting for action, Sir!".
Reilly jumped naked from 4 000m into minus 12 degree air as part of radio station 5fm's Speed Stick Give-it-Stick competition for the wackiest act. He leapt from the plane wearing only a stick of the deodorant bound with sticky tape to his penis.
Before the jump, a nervous but excited Reilly was seen running around the EP Skydivers' clubhouse in the nude.
The naked Reilly climbed into a light plane at 7.15am and jumped 45 minutes later. Speaking through gritted teeth, he said he endured a 50-second free fall at 200km/h "to get down quicker. It's cold man!"
Although he said he was scared of landing barefoot on the gravel, ECN witnessed his agony as he removed the plastic tape. Mr Reilly yelled "Aaaaagh!" for almost 30 seconds as he stripped the binding off, even though his wife Michelle had said playfully: "I'm going to take that off!"
She said: "It's madness what people will do for a car." Reilly was bidding to win a five-door Peugeot 206 sedan in the Speedstick Give It Stick And Win a Car Competition.
5FM DJ Kevin Fine said one competitor had "a stick tatooed to her bum." Mr Reilly will be admitted to the bar in the Grahamstown high court on Thursday.