Mark "Green Hornet" Brown

[bigbearfng 9]

Blue skies Mark, you'll be missed in the air, on the ground and everywhere.

[wmw999 2,121]

One of the nicest guys in the universe. 
Wendy P. 

[tbrown 26]

Mark Brown was one of the pillars of Perris Valley Skydiving. When I returned to the sport after an absence of 22 years he was my mentor - and remained my mentor for the next eleven years. I can't even imagine how many hundreds, maybe thousands of jumpers of all experience levels Mark shepherded to their next level of accomplishment. He was there rain, wind or shine and had a heck of a sense of humor. I'm grateful that I got to see him one more time last month, if only for a minute or so. I will always miss him.

[bigbearfng 9]

2 hours ago, tbrown said:

Mark Brown was one of the pillars of Perris Valley Skydiving. When I returned to the sport after an absence of 22 years he was my mentor - and remained my mentor for the next eleven years. I can't even imagine how many hundreds, maybe thousands of jumpers of all experience levels Mark shepherded to their next level of accomplishment. He was there rain, wind or shine and had a heck of a sense of humor. I'm grateful that I got to see him one more time last month, if only for a minute or so. I will always miss him.

Yes always loved his sense of humor! After he came back after his surgery to remove a brain tumor he said that now he can pinch a girls butt and then just say it was the tumor. Then he looked at me and said " now if I pinch your butt then it really is the brain tumor!"

[Baksteen 84]

Damn. I am ashamed to have overlooked this thread.

I jumped with Mark back in 2008, when I was a hundred jump wonder, with almost no FS-experience over 4-way. So it may be better to say he jumped with me. :-)

I'm from a small Cessna DZ and this was the first time I jumped from a twin otter. I did jump from caravans previously, but unlike in the Netherlands back then, the Perris Otters had benches.

For the life of me, I couldn't figure out the loading order. No matter where I was in the formation, I always seemed to end up in a (to me) illogical seat, where others would need to push past me from both sides.

Until I overheard Mark telling one of the other Perris organisers to "put the Dutch guy in the cold seat. He won't notice". Which was very funny and true enough. The only way I could cope with the California heat was because I could look forward to the next jump, when the door was raised slightly and cool air was allowed into the plane. As I recall they kept a shoe in the plane for exactly that pupose.

Mark also made a great impression on me by telling me the following: 

Mark's coach at the time forgot Mark's lead vest and had to go back to fetch it. This caused Mark to miss the flight that would become the Perris crash.