Jim_Hooper

While stationed in Berlin, I'd occasionally head down to Bad Keuznach for freebies with these guys. Gene 'Indian' DelPagetto jumpmastered me on my first jump in Germany; 'Gus' Gutshall grounded me for a day for some very bad canopy control; Cal 'No-slack'Callahan officiated when I finally made Cardinal Puff; John Womack was always a font of sound advice; and Bob Donohue sold me his Paracommander. As you probably know, Gus flew P-40Ns with the 23rd Pursuit Group (formerly the AVG Flying Tigers) in 1944-45 in China, before taking a reduction in rank to stay in the army, while John Womack was a veteran of the retreat from the Chosin Reservoir in Korea. I learned a lot from those guys. When Gus retired in the early or mid-70s, he settled in the Tampa area, came out to Z'hills a few times, then sort of disappeared. I don't think he could quite get his head around the idea of the gauche kid he'd known in Germany ending up as a DZO and serious relative work competitor and organizer. Hoop

JS - If I may interject here, I think you'll agree with me that Skratch's contribution have not been limited to rookies. All of us who have crossed paths with him gained something. Hoop

You wouldn't be referring to Mike Cerasoli's buddy, ex-narc and lawyer Drew Thornton, would you? Tsk-tsk, wasn't that a shame. No, really, I mean it. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,960158-1,00.html http://moesmisadventures.blogspot.com/2004/11/prequel-this-heres-south.html

The guy at the top is the only one on the high side trying to bring it down. His efforts were, I suspect, in vain. I can see the thought bubble: Time to let go.

No disagreement there, Jerry. My copy of American Caesar probably gets re-read every couple of years. Although not a great fan of historical fiction, I highly recommend Herman Wouk's Winds of War and the sequel War and Remembrance. Having grown up in a brown shoe Navy family (albeit a generation later than the novel's setting), I can say it smacks of authenticity. It ranks at the top of its genre. Hoop

No, nor any real attempt to collect stories from his 1943-44 tour with Torpedo Squadron 11. A few anecdotes, only. Shared in the sinking of three Japanese ships, bombed Saigon in late '43, Hong Kong, Okinawa, and covered the Leyte landings. Shame on me. Hoop PS I agree with you about the lines of the Corsair, which he flew post-war.

Philippines, perhaps, where my father's TBM was hit by groundfire that blew the top off one cylinder. That old P&W 2600 still got him back to the Hornet, where he got a wave off and ended up ditching. Lost a second TBM the very next day.

F4U in forground, TBM to right, C-47 (or Navy/USMC R4D) in background.

Jack - On top of Paul's update, here's a photo taken at the Reno Air Races I received from Frenchy a few weeks ago (along with an EatFuckSkydive T-shirt from the '77 Turkey Meet. Can't you just hear him muttering, Merde! Putain!? I don't think the Lear and Bimmer are his, but you never know. When I sold the center to Kabeller, I insisted on a clause in the contract that Frenchy was guaranteed a roof and bed whenever he came down for the winter. What would the evenings have been like without his campfires? One of my favorite stories about the irrascible Frenchman was his finding a wallet that had been lost by a jumper from up north on a no-suiter load. (Remember how he'd scour the DZ and surroundings every morning, looking for lost ripcords?) Inside was $900. I rang the guy, who confirmed that the amount was correct, and then asked me to give Frenchy $300 and mail the balance to him, which I thought was a class act. Hoop

Pam Tayon in the yellow T-shirt?

Next time ask the guy in charge. Of course, if you had, I'd probably have told you to ask BJ. Keep 'em guessing, that's my motto. Hoop

And Ed Mosher wearing No Cause For Panic. Can't mistake that hair for anyone else's. Hoop

Jon has it exactly right, albeit without the preamble. I'd cleared 40 acres seven months before the World Meet and, yes, made the mistake of burning the piles of palmetto roots (which are notoriously difficult to eradicate), then seeded the newly-bared ground and waited confidently for it to go from brown-black to a verdant green. Sort of like one of those documentaries where the desert is transformed overnight. I mean, hell, I had to mow the old DZ every week during the summer becaue of the climate and rain. So what happens? - we had the driest summer in years. Every day I stalked the new dropzone, looking for signs of life. Nuthin'. A week prior to the Meet I accepted the inevitable and forked out $10K for an acre of sod. Then the head of the Chinese delegation demanded to see me in my new office, where he began remonstrating with me about the presence of the South African team. This came as something of surprise, inasmuch as he had specifically asked me about the Springboks at the two previous CIP meetings in Paris and Bisham Abbey in England, and received the same answer: any member nation of the FAI could field a team and, therefore, a refusal to let them compete was illegal. There was national media attention being focused on the Chinese and a fair amount of sponsorship riding on their participation. Anyway, here I am, black, sweaty and grumpy from laying sod and in NO mood to be lectured by some short, fat Chinese general whose country had nothing to brag about when it came to human rights. Bastard probably came across the Yalu in 1950 during the Korean War. So when he said they were withdrawing unless I banned the Springboks, I sort of lost my cool and his official interpretor had some difficulty translating, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out." And as he waddled out, so did any chance of the Meet turning a profit. Ended up about $20K in the red if I remember correctly. These threads certainly do bring back some choice moments. Hoop

So give us the rest of the names.

Welp, I recognized a young Dave Sickler and an equally young Jim Mowrey. After that I went into brain lock mode and couldn’t put names to faces I remember. As far as the C-46, with two R-2800s dragging five (or was it six?) 10-man teams, it made for an interesting and moderately exotic jump ship. After its debut at the Turkey Meet that year, the Ten High Bunch and assorted wives, girlfriends and hangers-on loaded up at o-dark-thirty one night and partied all the way to Tahlequah for the ’73 Nationals. "Oh shit, the engine's on fire!" (Faces suddenly glued to the windows.) "That's the engine exhaust, you dumb fuck." "Wow." "It's blue." "Oh, wow, man, check out that blue exhaust." "Oh, yeah, man, that's like far out." "Dig it, I'm just gonna like groove on it for awhile." "Hey, who's bogarting?" Arriving over the airfield a little after dawn, about a dozen of us – in varying degrees of consciousness – skydived out. When we opened – two or three miles downwind of the DZ – everyone headed for the closest roads, from which we were picked up by a succession of bemused farmers, who weren’t quite sure what to make of these mostly bearded, long-haired hippy types wearing love beads and roach clips. Delivered to the airfield, we packed and waited for the airplane. And waited. Eventually, Jack Bergman wandered over to say that he’d just gotten a call. Seems the pilot had a look at the airport specs as he was descending and realized the width of the runway exceeded the width of his landing gear by about four feet, and diverted to Tulsa with ladies, stash and all the rest of a 1970s skydiver’s essentials. Sadly, the C-46 never flew at the Nationals. Hoop

Coming from someone who saw hundreds - maybe thousands - of them, that's a helluva compliment, Mark. Many thanks. PM me and let me know what you've been doing since we last crossed paths. Hoop

Zing - for time-to-climb and reliability, yeah, there's something to be said for it, but to lose that come-on-baby starter motor whine, the rattle-rattle, cough-cough, BANG, grumble-rumble-rumble, roar and clouds of exhaust smoke from 20 big radials...it just wouldn't be the same. The mid-70s Turkey Meet flightlines on a crisp, dewy morning with that deep-throated, ground-shaking, soul-satisfying sound and teams lined up to board will forever be an enduring image of Z'hills: it still speaks to the hearts of those who shared those amazing times. Hoop

Jim, Good to see your name on here. And the Z-Hills Ten Man Patch sure brings back a lot of good mimories. That Lodestar with the long windows belonged to Harold Stewart who was the DZ owner at Palatka. Even more great memories along with a lump in my throat. That meet was the culmination of everything that was Skydiving in the '70s. After that, things seemed to sort "platteu off" for a while. Well, I'll just be go to hell...Bob Nixon, one of the good guys who helped make Z'hills such a fun place. Mike Wadell sent me a photo recently of your old team. As I just told JS Bird in an email, it was truly the golden age of skydiving. Don't you feel a little sorry for those who never experienced it? What an era. Remind me which year it was that Harold and his Lodestar disappeared somewhere south of Florida. Hoop

I saw the whole thing. 644KP had just rotated when a thin stream of smoke came off one engine and then there was a godawmighty BANG! when the master rod snapped The airplane was back on the ground just past the intersection and stopped just shy of the numbers. A few days later I wandered over to have a look. The prop had been pulled and revealed that the torque of the prop when the engine siezed had twisted the splined, 6-inch diameter end of the crankshaft by about 60 degrees. Impressive. Hoop

Damn, Jim, 30 years down the road the only two I can positively identify are 43WT (Bob Sweet's Lodestar, second from left), 40T, and then possibly Harold Lang's Lodestar from Palatka. And yes, that would have been the '76 Turkey Meet with 102 registered 10-man teams, eight DC-3/C-47s and two Lodestars (one of the three in the pic did not fly the meet). Hoop

"I'd heard that Shafer was killed flying helicopters in South America. (Can't verify that, but I'll check the site and see if anyone else knows.)" What I heard from an impeccably reliable source was that Bob Shafer's Lodestar was (allegedly) low and slow in heavy rain somewhere in Louisiana, with Simon Fraser kicking out packages of exotic imports, when the aircraft hit high tension lines. Simon's body was recovered from a shallow grave near the crash site. Don't know about Shafer but apprently the Law descended on his house soon thereafter looking for him. That would have been in '82 or '83. Hoop

Don't worry, Howard. I've heard that when one is the constant subject of intrusive paparazzi, tempers can so fray that atypical behavior may result. Now that we know it's not you, any idea who it might be? Hoop

Bob 'Bobo' Branch and Jack Bergman at one of the Richmond Nationals in the late 70s. It was axiomatic that DC-3s blew a jug whenever there was good weather and lots of people wanting to jump. Hoop

Pic 1: Howard White and J. Scott Hamilton, though I don't think it's the '81 World Meet at Z'hills. Pic: 2 Pat Wenger sitting to left of door, maybe Pam Tayon sitting on wall, during the '81 World Meet. Hoop

Capable of carrying 12 skydivers comfortably, the 10E, along with the 196, was the mainstay at Z'hills in the first half of the 70s. I made 449 jumps from 'Amelia' before she was sold to Paul Fayard. She later featured on the dustjacket of Skies Call II and then suffered a hangar fire before being rebuilt and ending up in a museum. Hoop