I just stumbled on this forum and wanted to add that my dad was planning to make that jump 49 years ago but got a very bad case of the flu instead and missed it. My dad was Joe Cooper D-333. My mom says that they attended many of the funerals for the men who died in Lake Erie, as my dad knew so many of them. He always said that skydiving was the most thrilling thing he had ever done -- until the day he got saved and came to the Lord -- which he said was even more thrilling to him. He passed away a few years ago doing the thing he loved the most, mission work in India where he is now buried. Say, I went looking for the Lake Erie incident after reading a book by Mickey Robinson who tells about how he came to God through his skydiving accident (or rather plane crash that left him horribly burned). He mentions quite frequently how Dan Harding D-44 trained him, and then visited him day after day when he was in the hospital. So it is neat to see Dan's son posting here. My dad was also in more than one plane crash, but in the worst one, two men died while my dad was pulled to safety. He broke his leg on the last jump of his career during a charity event during a terrible 4th of July storm. He was blown off course, missed a power line, and then collapsed his chute in a tree. But even though nobody was around to see, he attempted to hit the ground standing. That didn't work out too well for him. Many years later, he jumped off of a moving train in India, broke his ribs, but continued on with his schedule. I bet a lot of his skydiving buddies were like him. A real John Wayne. Thanks Chuteless for sharing the story about that day the men died on Lake Erie. It helped me understand what my dad could've went through if things had turned out just a bit differently. Dean Cooper
