CarynCB

I’m Chris Bickerdike’s sister. I stumbled upon your site when googling Chris’ name after being in contact with his best friend from high school, Dale Dudley, who posted to this thread earlier. I was, to say the least, very touched by reading all of your memories of him. For those of you who don’t know, he died on March 28, 1987 on his first solo dive following the accident that nearly killed him in June of 1986. He called me the night before to tell me that he went on a tandem jump (forgive me if I mess up the skydiving terminology- I’m not a skydiver) at a new DZ in San Antonio. He was extremely pumped about it. So much so that he wanted to do a solo the next day. I told him that I was happy for him, but that I really didn’t think it was a good idea since he was scheduled for surgery the following Monday on his left wrist and his decision-making wasn‘t quite up to snuff yet. A cold front had come in that day. Eerily, like clockwork, we have had a cold front during that week every year since. He was wearing thick gloves. The theory is that he couldn’t get his hand out of the pocket when trying to pull the rip cord on his reserve. His hand was still in the pocket when he died. Yes, he had a cast on his left arm. Keep in mind he had a pretty bad head injury from the previous accident. He was only on a weekend pass from the hospital (BAMC). He fell into a patio cover, but no, not into a living room. We learned of his death when a newspaper reporter called. In retrospect, I truly feel he was given an extra 9 months to make things “right” in his life. He was reading the bible and asking a lot of questions about it. He started calling me almost every night just to let me know he loved me. Those are things that he almost never did prior to the first accident. And prior to that we fought like cats and dogs, like teenage brothers and sisters will. But we shared an apartment, which only exacerbated our squabbles. And he died doing what he loved: skydiving. His motto was “I’d rather have 60 seconds of wonderful than a lifetime of nothingness.” That was written in his logbook several times. Speaking of his log book, my Dad gave it to his best friend, David Armstrong. He and David were very close. They started a skydiving school together in Tyler. I haven’t talked to David (or signed- David is deaf) for many years. He came to my Dad’s funeral last year, but we didn’t get a chance to talk. David treasured that log book. He used to come over just to thumb through it after Chris died. He really loved Chris and my Dad knew that he would get more pleasure from his logbook than we would. We have his childhood memories to treasure. David and I had originally planned to publish his drawings in some way that would be meaningful to the skydiving “community.” I do need to get in touch with him to make copies of his drawings. Any suggestions as to what to do with them? I don’t mean to make a profit. I have always thought that his drawings would mean a lot to the right people, such as yourselves. David wanted to make T-shirts. I, and my family, miss Chris greatly. He was crazy about my daughters. They were only 2 and 3 when he died, but my oldest daughter still, 24 years later, treasures the teddy bear he gave her dressed in Army camis, embellished with Airborne insignia. Chris was an individual like no other. A little bohemian, a lot daredevil, and with a heart as big as Texas. Caryn Bickerdike Bettes [email protected]