SDC Article in the Chicago Reader

[FallingILweenie 0]

For those of you in Chicago, the Reader's front page today has an article on SDC which in my opinion is fairly negative (surprise surprise).

I tried to look for an online copy but i didnt find one.

blue ones,
Tomas

[WrongWay 0]

Why would something be published negatively about SDC?? Any recent events happen I don't know about?

Wrong Way
D #27371 Mal Manera Rodriguez Cajun Chicken Ø Hellfish #451
The wiser wolf prevails.

[FallingILweenie 0]

A lot of the article is about Roger and his passing, and his past, and the fatalities there in past years.

They do mention that things are changing under Missy and Rook, but overall I didn't think the article was too flattering.

[craichead 0]

I haven't read the article, yet...but I imagine that the negative comments would be based on its history rather than recent events. AndyMan is going to get a copy right now...maybe he'll be able to scan it in from work. Cross your fingers.

_Pm

Edited to add: Front-page Reader articles tend to be REALLY long, so it might not be possible to scan and post...

__
"Scared of love, love and aeroplanes...falling out, I said takes no brains." -- Andy Partridge (XTC)

[FallingILweenie 0]

The article is pretty long, and they have a bunch of pictures sprinkled in there too.

[sdctlc 0]

I can find their home page but nothing in the article. Can anybody find it online? The home page is http://www.chireader.com/ but they dont seem to have a search function....

Oh well......

Scott C.

"He who Hesitates Shall Inherit the Earth!"

[AndyMan 7]

Here's my best scan... my scanner sucks.

The title is "Look before you leap"

http://66.102.107.165/andrew/sdc.png

edit: much larger file, use this link if the above one doesn't work.
http://66.102.107.165/andrew/sdc.jpg

My first impression was that it was a shit-canning, but I may be too harsh. Later in the article Missy talks about her troubled relationship with her Dad, and Rook talks about witnising the accident from above. Then the article talks abour Roger getting busted, doing time, and he and his brother Carl starting at Hinckley, Carl dieing... Ron Passmore and the drug connection is also mentioned, although it does clarify toxicology reports on roger showed was not under the influence. It's really gotta be read.

It largely seems like its Todd Fey telling his story, which is a good thing. Is it a fair article? Dunno. I'm not sure if there is a good side to the story...

If I get really bored, I may transcribe it later today.

_Am

__

You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

[airtwardo 7]

I have a family member that works in Illinois
State government.
She gave my name & number to the state senator
from that area a couple years ago, and I was contacted
for some 'unbiased & insider' information...

I could give neither as I'm not a regular at SDC
though have jumped there several times, and
knew Roger (and Carl) from the 70's.
( I grew up 15 miles down the road from SDC)

It seems that the good citizens of Ottawa were
voicing numerous complains in regard to the
number of injuries and fatalities occurring there.

...As well as making inferences to
'possible illegal activities' going on at
the dropzone.
"How is it that they can afford all that
land, improvements, aircraft...?"

I refereed the Senators office to statical
information outlining the correlation between
number of jumps and deaths / injuries.
SDC being within expected parameters...

I explained that the business is sucessful,
well run, efficent and attractive to the general
parachute communtiy...that being the reason
for expansion and additional aircraft over the prior
site...it was also a safer location, not being
next to the busy interstate.

Roger had also tried to keep the good will
of the Ottawa community in mind by taking
the growing operation north, away from the
populated areas, yet remaining close enough
that the city still benefited from the dollars
spent there by his cliental.

I explained to them that his dropzone was
one of three in the country, that was a destination
point for jumpers from all over the U.S. as well
as the world.

Almost everything I said seemed to fall on deaf ears,
at least in my opinion anyway...

They had / have an unwarranted and unfounded
negative opinion about SDC, and seemed to be
looking only for support of that view.

(I'm reminded of the line in Blazing Saddles
"These are simple, hard working, salt of the Earth
people..you know...Morons!")

Perhaps Utica?!

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[ScubaSteve 0]

I grew up in Ottawa, IL and know that the town likes SDC there. I think the state senators are looking for a cause , as always, to make a name for themselves. Groing up there I was only aware the dropzone existed when there were world record attempts. Its is really low key locally. After College and moving to Chicago I found them there.

[diverdriver 7]

Quote

I grew up in Ottawa, IL and know that the town likes SDC there. I think the state senators are looking for a cause , as always, to make a name for themselves. Groing up there I was only aware the dropzone existed when there were world record attempts. Its is really low key locally. After College and moving to Chicago I found them there.

Most of us do try to get along with the fabric of the town. Many live in the community. I think most town's people have no idea about what goes on out there and could really care less. Not one town's person has come out (that I know of) and expressed a problem with the fatalities. Now, I'VE expressed a problem with the fatalities because I've known or dealt with all of them since 1997. Believe me I'd love to be able to point to one cause as to why all of them happened. I'd love to see them back.

I didn't read the whole thing that Andyman posted as some seemed to be cut off so I won't say much of anything further until I've read it. But I did find how they used the phrase "compound" in the very first sentence of the article. I actually laugh when I see that now. There are no walls. No one is kept in or out. Kinda hard to have a "compound" without walls eh?

[ScubaSteve 0]

My sister lives just south of airport but north of I80. Her neighborhood likes to spend the summers sitting in the backyard watching the sky. They feel like there is an airshow for them every weekend and dont mind what little noise they hear.

Being a newbie to the sport, i have get the feeling that most at SDC are safety aware. Its too bad that they get press like this. It would have been nice to get a front page story in reader about the Spring Expo.

[airtwardo 7]

If I had known of you back then Chris, I certainly
would have put you in contact with the people
to whom I was speaking...

You undoubtedly could have given an
insiders opinion and voiced it much better
than I did.

But then again, as I said...
They seemed only to be looking for simple
confirmation on the ideas they already had.

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[smooth 0]

Quote

But I did find how they used the phrase "compound" in the very first sentence of the article.

The first thing I thought of when I saw that was . . Terry Murray. And of course, he's quoted later on in the article.

[wildblue 7]

Quote

Quote

But I did find how they used the phrase "compound" in the very first sentence of the article.

The first thing I thought of when I saw that was . . Terry Murray. And of course, he's quoted later on in the article.

I thought the same when the first line called it "... the 'compound'...."
Didn't see the later part where he was quoted (I'm sure it was an unbiased, solicited opinion) -- was that not on what Andy quoted?

it's like incest - you're substituting convenience for quality

[AndyMan 7]

Here's my best attempt at a scan with OCR - optical character regonition. Typos are probably mine or the softwares.. Author is Porochista Khakpour. Copied without permission, cuz the Reader really needs a website.

Look Before You Leap: Jumping out of airplanes is dangerou sport, but at the drop zone build by skydiving legend Roger Nelson - where he himself perished last summer - the death rate is nearly twice the national average.


Everyone at "the compound," the headquarters of Skydive Chicago, agrees with Todd Fey that Saturday, June 7, 2003, was a nice day for hurling yourself out of an airplane. "Winds were very light," recalls. the 42-year-old marine parachutist and skydiving instructor, who has more than 2,200 jumps under his bell. To this day Fey isn't sure how or why, in the course of a routine jump under ideal condition, he got caught up in the chain of events that led to the death of Skydive Chicago's founder and leader, Roger Nelson.

A veteran of over 9,000 jumps, the 48-year-old Nelson was a skydiving legend. In the 19705 he pioneered and promoted radical new styles of jumping. Throughout the 80s and
90s, he orchestrated group free falls involving record-setting numbers of jumpers in a single formation. In '87 he was convicted on charges of masterminding an international smuggling ring responsible for importing millions of dollars' worth of illegal drugs into the Chicago area. While serving time in a federal prison, Nelson became a devout evangelical Christian. Released in '93,/he founded Skydive Chicago, 80 miles southwest of the city in Ottawa, Illinois, and began building it into one of the wo!ld's most popular skydiving facilities.

Around 2:30 that afternoon, Fey, Nelson, and about 20 other jumpers boarded one of Skydive Chicago's two twin Otter airplanes. Some were experienced, others were about to make their first leaps with instructors strapped to their backs-an arrangement called tandem training. Nelson was working with a student but not in tandem. Fey and a partner were making their fifth jump of the day. Fifteen minutes into its ascent, the plane leveled off at an altitude of 13,000 feet, two and a half miles from the airstrip. Separated by a count of five seconds, the jumpers began throwing themselves through the door of the plane, a square of blinding white light. Fey recalls a small group of "flat" {belly first) skydivers exiting the Otter first. Next went the free flyers-aerial gymnasts who engage in group routines during their 60 seconds of free fall.
Fey and his partner were among the latter. They were 20 seconds into their jump when Nelson and his student left the aircraft.
At about 3,000 feet, Fey and his partner completed their routine, separated, and pulled their rip cords. "You don't want to open your parachute close to anybody," says Fey. Like Nelson, they were using Velocity parachutes-small, high-performance .canopies designed to handle steep. turns at high speeds. Both chutes deployed perfectly.
Scanning the sky at 2,500 feet, Fey saw. parachutes opening overhead and, just 50 feet below his own dangling feet, his partner's canopy. "We were on similar parachutes so I thought I would follow him in," he says. "I was going to let him land first and then just follow him in." A few hundred feet above the ground, Fey watched his partner go into his final approach and prepared to do the same. "I thought I was gonnabe the second one to land, he says. But
as he came out of his final turn at 50 feet, he found himself bagged in something other than sky. "There was no warning for me," he says. "I saw Roger's canopy at the exact same time that I collided with it. The canopy appeared to come from my left; it kind of overtook me. I remember thinking, this is a very dangerous 1hing happening here, to have a collision so close to the ground. I was really trying to just save my life, trying to make my parachute fly. "

Blinded by nylon and with his own canopy largely deflated, Fey somehow managed to regain tension in his steering handles. Fey reckons he hit the ground at 50 miles an hour, and that the interval between the aerial collision and the final impact ~a-s three seconds at most. "I just lay there trying not to move, because I really thought my back was broke. At that point I thought I was the only one hurt-I was facing away from Roger. At some point while people were attending to me and .medical technicians started to show up, I recognized that there was someone else. I didn't know how bad."

SDC instructor Donna Wright, who was flying tandem with a student, remembers the scene as it looked from several hundred feet. "I didn't know .who it was, but I knew someone was injured," she says. "I saw the crowd of people on the ground, and I just tried to reassure my tandem student that I'm sure he's OK, whoever it is on the ground. I was telling her not to look down and to try not to pay attention " to what's going on there, because we were finishing our skydive.”

Having just completed a jump from SDC's other Twin Otter, Nelson's23"year-old son Rook was on the ground and close enough to the impact to witness it. "1 had just walked into the hangar and I turned around because I heard some people screaming," he says. 'and I saw him crash. I knew who it was because I saw his white jumpsuit. " Rook raced to his father's side. "He was alive there, but he was pretty messed up.

He had broken almost everything in his body. " The injured men were taken to Ottawa Hospital. Fey had a fractured foot and ankle and torn ligaments in both knees. Nelson was evacuated to Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, where he died of multiple internal injuries. He was Skydive Chicago's 14th fatality in ten years.

Ottawa. population 17,000, was the site of the first Lincoln-Douglas debate, and is home to a memorial to WD. Boyce, founder of the Boy Scouts of America, as well as a strip club called the Silver Slipper Saloon. But the biggest draw to the area is SDC's 230-acre drop zone, whose facilities include a full-ser- vice campground, a pond stocked with fish and surrounded by a man-made strip of white sand, a riding stable, and a fishing pier overlooking the Fox River. The compound is dotted with movable shelters of various kinds-RVs, trailers, mobile homes, dilapidated. yellow school buses, converted semis- belonging to staff and regular jumpers. There's a big brick house Roger built for his parents, Carl and Pat, who live there still. The largest building on the site is the huge and immaculate hangar where SDC's Cessna 182 Skylane and the Twin Otters are kept when not in service. Next in size is the conference. center, which houses a 300-seat auditorium, classrooms~ conference suites, a restaurant called the Ali Bear Cafe, and overnight suites next to a huge office with a two-foot plasma TV and windows offering a panoramic view of the grounds. Since Roger Nelson's death the offices have been occupied by Rook and his sister Missy, 26.

"I had a rough relationship with my dad," Missy continues. "He was hard on me. He tried to teach me how to speak in public, and do all these little PR events, but it always ended up him taking over the show and I'd be like under his wing. " She pauses, looks up to the ceiling, and says with a small laugh, "Sorry if this is making you mad. "
Missy says that about six weeks before he died, Roger Nelson began preparing her and Rook to take the reins. "He was like, 'If I die, what are you kids going to do? You
don't do anything. ' I would go home and think about what would happen if he would die. He really wanted us to get involved. " Her father's way of bringing her into the fold was characteristically contrarian. "My dad used a lot of reverse psychology on me," says Missy. "He told my brother and me, 'This place will not run without me. ' "

A petite blond, Missy is president of SDC. Lanky, spike-haired Rook succeeded his father as SDC's program director. Both are multiple medalists and world-record holders. Missy made her first tandem jump with her father at age five, Rook at better four. "My dad was that type of person," says Missy, "He took me hang gliding when l was three. I asked my mom, 'Why did you let me go?' and she was like, 'Yeah, like I could have told your father no. Ha!' " (Missy's mother, Jeannie, was divorced from Roger and lives in the southwest. ) Missy and Rook are third- generation skydivers: their paternal grandfather learned to jump while serving as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army's 82nd ~ Airborne Division in World War II and continued for the love of it after 'he was demobilized. In ~ 1970 Roger's older brother, Carl Jr., started jumping at a drop ~ zone in Hinckley, ll1inois, down ~ the road from Ottawa. The facility permitted 16-year-olds to jump, but only with parental consent, so 15-year-old Roger forged his father's signature on the form to make his first skydive, The brothers soon became regulars at Hinckley. At a time when skydiving was associated with a sober military aesthetic, the Nelson boys-who had long hair, wore scruffy clothes, and engaged in such antics as jumping barefoot or even naked-were called "the freak brothers" by the older jumpers. Carl and Roger embraced the name, assuming the ranks of Freak Brother numbers One and Two, respectively. Outsiders could gain admittance to the brotherhood by participating in a jump with two members in good standing. More- than 4,000 jumpers have since joined the club, which .is still going strong. In '73 the brothers began publishing a zine called the Freak Brother f/yer, dedicated, to technical aspects of "relative work," maneuvers in which two , or more jumpers come together in the air to "create formations, In '77 the Nelsons organized the first Freak Brothers Convention, a weekend of partying, music, and competitive jumping. The convention grew into an annual institution, the. biggest party on the skydiving calendar. (The tra- dition ended when Roger Nelson was arrested in '86, but a similar festival, the World Freefall Convention, soon emerged to take its place. )

In '78 Roger began pushing past the conventional belly-first jumping position and exploring the possibilities of falling belly-up or headfirst, The radical new style, which he called freak flying, anticipated the now popular style known as free flying-a wide-open approach that can involve rotating in the air on any bodily axis conceivable.

The good times were interrupted in '79 when Carl Nelson Jr. died in a jumping accident at a Pennsylvania drop zone. Roger, who was doing relative work with him, noticed that a control line had worked its way out of Carl's parachute pack and gestured to him that he had a problem. When Carl pulled his rip cord, his chute became ensnarled in the loose control line. His reserve chute became similarly entangled, resulting in what skydivers call a "streamer"-a flapping, unflyable canopy.

The trauma of watching his brother die notwithstanding, Roger went on to establish his own drop zone in Sandwich, Illinois, in '82 and continued to organize the annual Freak Brothers conventions. Then in '86 federal prosecutors charged that he'd been the ring- leader of a smuggling network since '76, and that he and 16 coconspirators were respon- sible for transporting millions of dollars' worth of marijuana and cocaine from Belize, Jamaica, and Colombia into the Chicago area.

Such activities were not exactly unheard of among skydivers of Nelson's generation, according to Mike Truffer, publisher of Skydiving magazine. "I'm 53, so Roger and 1 were part of the same age cohort," says Truffer. “I don’t think drug use was widespread among skydivers then the rest of society, but it was common. With the smuggling, we're talking about opportunity. Skydivers are risk takers, and they have access to suitable aircraft. Back then it was easy to fly one to Mexico or South America, fill it with drugs, then fly it back, and no one would know. "

Nelson initially disputed the charges, claiming that he had become involved in the drug trade at the behest of the DEA, which had recruited him as an undercover operative in '85 to penetrate and report on existing smuggling rings. But faced with a possible life sentence, Nelson opted to avoid a trial. In exchange for pleading guilty to charge of tax evasion and operating a continuing criminal enterprise, he received a ten-year sentence, of which he ultimately served less than half.

While doing time at the federal prison in Rochester, Minnesota; Nelson befriended disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker, who was his cell mate between '91 and '92. "Roger was very, very influential in my life in prison," says Bakker, who was released in '94. "He just became one of my best friends. Roger was an adventurer. He wore an old leather bomber jacket that he had in prison somehow. He just had the look of a skydiver and an adventurer, somebody who would pilot DC-3s and fly them allover the world."

Asked whether he played a direct part in bringing Nelson to Christ, Bakker says, "I hope so. When I met him, he wasn't very spiritually minded. In prison I wasn't allowed to preach or anything, but I could talk to people, and so he got interested." But after his marriage to Tammy Faye Bakker fell apart, the evangelist adds, it was Nelson who ministered to him. "When I hit the worst time in the prison we were in the cell together. My wife divorced me and married someone else, who was my friend I thought. It was like I had lost everything. But for the next 60 days, Roger became like a pastor and just prayed with me, gave me wisdom beyond what I have ever known. It was almost super-natural: God knew I needed somebody to help me through that very difficult moment, and Roger was there.”

Nelson was released in ’93. Skydive Sandwich having folded in his absence, he set about building a bigger, better drop zone, Skydive Chicago. According to Glenn Bangs, president of the United States Para- chuting ASsociation, Nelson's return to sky- diving created a stir of controversy in the community. "One camp was like, 'He served his debt to society,' and the other was, 'Oh no, we have a convicted felon. ' "

The terms of his plea bargain had required Nelson to forfeit $2 million in assets, much of it in the form of gold and silver bars and coins. But as Skydive Chicago began to grow into the busiest drop zone in the mid-west, rumors circulated that Nelson had managed to hang on to some of his ill-gotten gains, and was using them to capitalize SDC. "My dad was financially very savvy, and he also believed in- plowing every penny back into the business, keeping the equipment current, making sure that students had the latest, safest gear to use, not army-surplus junk," says Missy. "That always set some tongues wagging. Even now, whenever.' we make an improvement, there are people who are going to start talking about Roger Nelson's bottomless pile of gold. Well, I'm sad to say there Just isn't any buried treasure. "

The average drop zone is a utilitarian space with a minimum of amenities not directly related to skydiving. Nelson took Skydive Chicago in a novel direction, turning it into a multipurpose recreational facility, complete with pool tables, video games; satellite TV, horseback riding trails, and a theater that doubles as a disco.

Another of Nelson's innovations at the drop zone was evangelism. He spoke openly about his Christian faith to staff and students, and posted his spiritual reflections weekly on the SDC Web site, He instituted a no-swearing policy, which is still enforced: if you curse at the compound, you're likely .to get a peace sign in the face along with a firm reminder to "spread the love. "

It was Nelson's ambition to institute regular Sunday services at the drop zone. He and Missy were looking around the Ottawa area for a minister who would fit in at the compound when they discovered that one of their frequent jumpers, Laurian Lazarescu was a Romanian Baptist pastor. “We began talking, and in the winter of 2001 he said, ‘Let’s do a big Christian revival event,’” says Lazarescu, who left his ministry at Chicago’s First Romanian Baptist Church last year to become the full-time pastor of SDC's Seraphim Fellowship of Jesus Christ. He claims he's converted 25 jumpers at SDC in the past year.

Not everyone in the skydiving community was impressed by Nelson's spiritual makeover. One of Nelson and SDC's fiercest critics is Terry Murray, a telecommunications construction worker who worked as a jump instructor and marketing executive at SDC for six years but quit in '98 because, he says, he "was fed up with "Roger Koresh's cult" and the way Nelson was running the drop zone. Murray likes to tell the story about graffiti he spotted on a Skydive Chicago billboard while driving west on 1-80 last year. Some- body had spray painted over the company's toll-free number and tagged a different number above it. "Driving by, I called the number," says Murray. "The person answered the phone, 'LaSalle County coroner's office. ' I just started laughing. "

In Murray's opinion, the fatalities at SDC stem from something worse than a run of bad luck. He contends Nelson pushed. for the maximum number of jumps at the expense of safety, taking students on tandems in bad weather .and through low layers of clouds. On one occasion, he says, he, Nelson, and their students ended up 18 miles away from the drop zone. "There was no visibility, everything was buried in clouds. " he says. "But the second he started seeing ground, Roger had everyone out of the plane. When we finally got back to the airport, Roger told me the main thing is the students jumped and we made money." Murray also says that there was still a culture of recreational drug use at SDC when he quit. "But as much as anything, the danger came from the atmosphere Roger created around himself," says Murray~ "He was aggressive and sort of a maverick, and he made people around him want to be that way too."

There have been no fatalities on Missy and Rook's watch. But they maintain that the death toll at SDC simply reflects that it's one of the busiest drop zones in the country. "Skydiving is a dangerous sport," says Missy "People die; nobody knows that better than this fami1y But " keep in mind we do 75,000 jumps every year, r which is way more than anyone else. I'm not downplaying the seriousness of it, but the risks of dyeing is something that we all accept in this. sport. And it's not a death wish-it's the way s we wish to live. "

Some of SDC's critics and competitors reject 75,000 as an exaggeration, but if it's accurate the death rate at the Ottawa drop zone is still nearly double the national " average. (According to the United States e Parachute Association, there are about 30 skydiving fatalities every year out of 3.3 million jumps. A proportionate death toll at a facility conducting 75,000 drops a year would be about one death every 17 months, or seven deaths over a decade. )

Although toxicology tests on Roger Nelson’s body found no trace of drugs, at least two other fatal accidents at SDC were drug related. In July 2002, a 33 year old jump instructor name Ronald Passmore was killed while attempting a risky landing maneuver called a pond swoop, where the skydiver ends his jump by skimming his feet across a water surface. Passmore’s aorta was severed when he belly flopped into the drop-zone’s tiny pond. An autopsy revealed intoxicating levels of cannabis in his system. The preceding year another dead jumper (not an instructor) tested positive for cocaine, cannabis, and ecstasy.

Missy Nelson flatly denies that student safety has ever been compromised in pursuit of profit at SDC. “My father was always looking for ways to make the student experience as safe and enjoyable as possible, and that’s the way we’ll always run things as well.” She points to a new drug testing policy that she and her brother introduced last year. All instructors, she says, must test clean at the beginning of the season or they will not be allowed to work. (There are no follow-up tests.) “Society makes us push to do that,” she adds. “It’s almost like a forced thing to do. Because my dad never really wanted to regulate. Skydivers are free-spirited people. We like to do what we like to do, jus sharing, spreading love”.

_Am

__

You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

[tombuch 0]

The story doesn't look that bad in total. In general, it is accurate and reflects what the public is thinking and saying. We may not always like what others are saying about us, but a reporter really can't ignore the open dialog. The writer digs up all the accusations and then gets a response from the Nelson's. It may not be a great advertisement, but overall it is balanced. I think Missy did a very solid job of presenting a positive spin on some ugly history.

Quote

Some of SDC's critics and competitors reject 75,000 as an exaggeration, but if it's accurate the death rate at the Ottawa drop zone is still nearly double the national " average. (According to the United States e Parachute Association, there are about 30 k skydiving fatalities every year out of 3.3 million jumps. A proportionate death toll at a facility conducting 75,000 drops a year d would be about one death every 17 months, le or seven deaths over a decade.)

This paragraph is a bit of a problem. If we use his number of 3,300,000 jumps per year as reported by USPA, and an average of about 33 fatalities annualy which was the number being quoted when he wrote the article, then the national average is about 1 fatality per 100,000 jumps. The rate at SDU is reported as 1:75,000, and that is higher than the national average, but not double the national rate.

My hunch is that the large number of transient jumpers coupled with the cutting edge nature of the drop zone have created an elevated fatality rate. Likewise, the DZ had a great safety record for a while and was then hit with a run of very bad luck. Statistics can be easily influenced when the total number of fatalities is so low, and I think that's also part of the SDU story.

Overall, the writer did a reasonable job of research and balanced his feature.

BTW, I believe was interviewed via email by this reporter about general skydiving and safety issues, as well as my limited experience at SDU, perhaps as background. I believe the writer was also looking at posting here and on rec.skydiving. My quotes were not used.

Tom Buchanan
Author JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy

Tom Buchanan
Instructor Emeritus
Comm Pilot MSEL,G
Author: JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy

[skygazer 0]

Thanks for scanning the article, Andy!

_______________________________________

[kallend 2,146]

Quote

Quote

I grew up in Ottawa, IL and know that the town likes SDC there. I think the state senators are looking for a cause , as always, to make a name for themselves. Groing up there I was only aware the dropzone existed when there were world record attempts. Its is really low key locally. After College and moving to Chicago I found them there.

Most of us do try to get along with the fabric of the town. Many live in the community. I think most town's people have no idea about what goes on out there and could really care less. Not one town's person has come out (that I know of) and expressed a problem with the fatalities. Now, I'VE expressed a problem with the fatalities because I've known or dealt with all of them since 1997. Believe me I'd love to be able to point to one cause as to why all of them happened. I'd love to see them back.

I didn't read the whole thing that Andyman posted as some seemed to be cut off so I won't say much of anything further until I've read it. But I did find how they used the phrase "compound" in the very first sentence of the article. I actually laugh when I see that now. There are no walls. No one is kept in or out. Kinda hard to have a "compound" without walls eh?

Well, adding two and two, a certain tandem master who had a vendetta with Roger always uses the words "The Compound" when referring to SDC. Maybe he had something to do with the wording.

Edited to add - I wrote this before reading Andy's scan. But it's obvious Terry M influenced the article beyond his direct quotes.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[diverdriver 7]

I'm inclined to let it go about Terry. You know the paper wanted to stir it up again and of course it's easy to find old quotes from Terry. Would he really need to be involved in writing a new article? No. Old posts and old Tribune articles would be easy to get stuff from.

Anyhow, on one hand, they say safety is a concern for students. Yet, no tandem student has died there in all of those deaths. Not saying it coudn't happen. But up till now there hasn't been one. What has happened has been 2 deaths during world record attempts. One death from dropping a toggle during a carving turn to landing. One death from a stunt done too low with no outs (flipping upside down in harness to handstand in the risers becoming entangled and dieing from the spiralling impact). One death from performing EPs too low to make a difference. One death from someone definitely hung over from drug use and performing EPs at about 200 feet. One death from a jumpper who was told REPEATEDLY not to swoop the pond when they thought he was sober and he went and tried it while high on marijuana. One static line student who became entangled on his first jump from a poor exit and hanging on to the pilot chute after being instructed that day on how to get out of a horseshoe mal if it occured (this one was a damn tragedy and I will never forget the expression on this kids face as he hung from the 182 strut (and also, SDC does not do static line jumps anymore with regular students)). One fatality jumper went with a newer jumper for coaching and collided with his knee. The installed Cypres was not turned on before jumping. Other than geographical location I do not see how the operation is at fault for the deaths. Believe me I have lane awake at night thinking about all this. If I thought there was something inherently wrong with how the DZ was run I would leave.

But that is all the past now. It can't be changed. So, moving on we can only look to how the operation is run now and support Missy and Rook to make good decisions about safety. That is what I will endeavour to do.

Chris Schindler
www.diverdriver.com
ATP/D-19012
FB #4125

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

Quote

I'm inclined to let it go about Terry. You know the paper wanted to stir it up again and of course it's easy to find old quotes from Terry. Would he really need to be involved in writing a new article? No. Old posts and old Tribune articles would be easy to get stuff from.

True, they could be unethical and use a source from an old article - not checking up on sources is a terrible thing to do. Maybe they should do a check on Terry and see what they find, he may lose some credibility. Nonetheless - no one in my five years at SDC has anyone refered to it as "the compound." However, we have made plenty of jokes about Kool-Aid. Let people believe what they might - if they want to latch onto the Terry stories, fine. We don't need those people around to bring the rest of us down.

My first thought when I saw this post was "sigh. here we go again." I'm not certain I understand the reason for this article, and it certainly has put a dent in my mood....some of the deaths mentioned in that article are still hard to accept to this day.

Quote

Anyhow, on one hand, they say safety is a concern for students. Yet, no tandem student has died there in all of those deaths. Not saying it coudn't happen. But up till now there hasn't been one. What has happened has been 2 deaths during world record attempts. One death from dropping a toggle during a carving turn to landing. One death from a stunt done too low with no outs (flipping upside down in harness to handstand in the risers becoming entangled and dieing from the spiralling impact). One death from performing EPs too low to make a difference. One death from someone definitely hung over from drug use and performing EPs at about 200 feet. One death from a jumpper who was told REPEATEDLY not to swoop the pond when they thought he was sober and he went and tried it while high on marijuana. One static line student who became entangled on his first jump from a poor exit and hanging on to the pilot chute after being instructed that day on how to get out of a horseshoe mal if it occured (this one was a damn tragedy and I will never forget the expression on this kids face as he hung from the 182 strut (and also, SDC does not do static line jumps anymore with regular students)). One fatality jumper went with a newer jumper for coaching and collided with his knee. The installed Cypres was not turned on before jumping. Other than geographical location I do not see how the operation is at fault for the deaths. Believe me I have lane awake at night thinking about all this. If I thought there was something inherently wrong with how the DZ was run I would leave.

You missed the canopy collision of two jumpers after a team jump. Still, that would easily lend to your point - the DZ, location, training methods or DZO had nothing to do with the lose of our friends. Like Chris, all of us at SDC have lost countless nights of sleep trying to figure this out and what could have been done different. We have lost even more friends from people quitting the sport and stop associating with us since they couldn't handle the pain anymore.

It is a safe operation. If it wasn't I wouldn't jump there and I would do my best to get all my friends to leave.

Quote

But that is all the past now. It can't be changed. So, moving on we can only look to how the operation is run now and support Missy and Rook to make good decisions about safety. That is what I will endeavour to do.

Rook and Missy are doing an amazing job. In fact, they are doing better than some seasoned DZOs that I know. I've only been around 5 years, but the amount of growth both of them have gone through since the first time I met them is something to behold.

Skydive Chicago hasn't missed a beat, the support staff and training staff are world class. I doubt I will ever find another DZ that is as safe, friendly, and greats everyone with a smile.

STL

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[diverdriver 7]

Quote

You missed the canopy collision of two jumpers after a team jump.

Oh man, how could I have left that out? Mental block? Yah, I was there for that one too. So, I would say that having two canopy collisions resulting in 3 deaths in almost the exact same spot -would- be something that is common and should be preventable. And how long have we all preached Russian radar? Look left, look right, look up, look down, repeat? LONG before those fatalities happened.

I have noticed a proliferation of canopy collisions under good canopies though. The past few years since Deb and Steve died have seen some pretty preventable collisions happen. All we can continue to do is preach to keep the head on a swivel and don't try to land close where everyone else is landing. Always assume your friends are trying to kill you. They just might be without knowing it.

Chris Schindler
www.diverdriver.com
ATP/D-19012
FB #4125

[kallend 2,146]

I thought it was sloppy journalism. How many jumpers did they interview? One, a disgruntled former employee, fired, IIRC, for fighting. Why not interview a handful of other SDC jumpers to find if Terry actually has any credibility in the community?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[diverdriver 7]

No, Terry was not fired. He left. That much I DO know.

[kallend 2,146]

Quote

No, Terry was not fired. He left. That much I DO know.

I stand corrected. There was a fight involved, though.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[TandemTerry 0]

That story came about LAST summer. Why it took so long I don't know? They did ask me questions, and yes, I did answer them.

The picture on the front page was of me and the Nelsons skydiving.

Terry Murray
God Bless and Spread The Love