Bill Booth -- Press Clips

[quade 4]

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/volusia/orl-vlvbooth01060103jun01,0,1942033.story?coll=orl-news-print-asec

Nice photos in the article at the URL listed above.


Career has him falling in clouds

By Charlene Hager-Van Dyke | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted June 1, 2003

DELAND -- He's taught celebrities, actors and scientists, but Bill Booth's favorite time spent strapped to another human and jumping from a plane was when he showed his 17-year-old daughter what his passion was about.

"She just loved it," he said, looking at a photo of Katie Booth's first tandem jump with her inventor, instructor, adventurer dad. "Just look at the smile on her face."

And, while the 57-year-old DeLand businessman also has another daughter -- 14-year-old Julie Booth -- he is known worldwide for fathering something else: tandem sky diving.

"I was teaching people static-line jumps and I thought, 'I wish I could take them with me, instead of just showing them the door of the plane,' " he said.

Booth, who's described as a freethinker and a genius, got the idea for two people to jump on a single parachute back in 1973. He first tested it when he and a friend jumped with a 44-foot cargo parachute in the Everglades.

"We had absolutely no control," Booth said, smiling as he remembered the parachute passing them in free fall.

And, while Booth continued to test his idea, another inventor type, Ted Strong of Strong Enterprises in Orlando, got the same idea in the 1980s.

"Ted and I could never figure out who really invented tandem so we consider ourselves co-developers of it because we applied to the Federal Aviation Administration at the same time," Booth said.

Glenn Bangs, president of the U.S. Parachute Association, calls it a tie between the two. But Bangs, a former Army parachute team leader from Jacksonville, credits Booth for much more.

"He's always looking to make parachute systems safer and he's always finding new ways of doing it," he said.

Booth made his first jump at 19 near Gainesville. He was going scuba diving when a sky diver landed in front of him, so he picked him up. The sky diver planned to jump again and asked if Booth wanted a ride. The cost: $10.

"It was a major sensory overload," he said, recalling his first time nearly 40 years ago. "I didn't really feel anything, but I remember seeing cows and hills at the airport and thinking that the state wasn't really that flat."

More than 6,100 jumps -- 1,100 of which were tandems -- later, Booth has only used his reserve four times.

"Most sky divers get killed breaking the rules. I've tried to make every way to get killed in the sport illegal," Booth said, referring to some of his inventions and redesigns that now are required to help save lives.

The industry has been good to Booth. It's taken him to places and introduced him to people he never dreamed he'd meet. He's jumped in Russia, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, at the North Pole, and into an isolated area of South America he refers to as "the lost world."

And he's rubbed more than elbows with Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Wesley Snipes, Ron Reagan, Stephen Baldwin and a few Playboy bunnies. His Hollywood connections also got him a small part in the movie, The Firm.

But the most interesting person he's taken sky diving is former Apollo II astronaut Michael Collins, the guy who stayed in the orbiter while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first to walk on the moon in 1969.

"After we landed he said it was the 'greatest' thing he'd ever done," Booth said. "And he'd been to the moon!"

His two most memorable tandem expeditions were to a remote area of South America, and the first of his six trips to the North Pole. After word spread of the tandem invention in 1984, he was invited to demonstrate it in Siberia.

"I was telling a Russian doctor the benefits of tandem and how I drop him anywhere, even to the North Pole, and he said 'Let's do it.' " That trip made him the first person to ever tandem sky dive to the North Pole.

A year later, he was hired by the BBC to take 12 scientists and a film crew into a remote area at the headwaters of the Amazon River of Venezuela, where researchers discovered a species of bat that has a 6-foot wingspan.

In DeLand, Booth owns The Uninsured Relative Workshop, a parachute harness and container manufacturing company that employs 49 people and pulls in between $3 million to $4 million a year. The company, which he started in Miami in 1973, gets its name from two ideas of thought. The "Relative Workshop" is because sky divers fall relative to one another, Booth said. The "Uninsured" moniker is a warning to people looking to sue: He has no insurance.

The company makes 30 percent of all parachutes and packs used in the United States. More than 100,000 sky divers, especially those from countries that are frozen for most of the year, come here to jump while patronizing a dozen sky-diving businesses. They contribute to a $30 million industry that feeds and clothes about 300 local people who make their living off the sport.

DeLand wasn't always the "sky-diving capital of the world." But, it got that reputation after someone brought a DC-3 to the drop zone in the '70s, and Bob Hallett arrived a decade later to run what is now Skydive DeLand.

Hallett and Booth, who are close friends, met about 20 years ago after Hallett moved here from Arizona to start the new parachute center. For a couple of years in the mid-1980s, they were partners in what was then called Florida Parachute Ride. That, according to Hallett, was the "beginning of tandem jumping."

Each benefited from the partnership: Hallett needed the products and Booth needed to be near a growing drop zone. The partnership, which was intended to be temporary, ended when Hallett bought out Booth's interest.

Hallett said that initially some people in the industry considered Booth a sort of "absent-minded professor."

"I used to think so, too," Hallett said. "But, then I realized he's really more of a genius. Nobody has done more to help keep people alive. And all of the major sky-diving innovations in the whole world have come from Bill Booth."

Booth is set apart from his competitors by the number of quality devices he's invented, Bangs said. So far, according to Bangs, Booth has come up with half a dozen sky-dive-rigging inventions. Most of his competitors have one, or maybe two inventions of their own, Bangs said.

As if Booth doesn't stand out enough for his accomplishments, he is recognizable for one attribute he's had for more than 25 years: a reddish-brown beard that drapes from his chin down to his belt buckle.

The beard -- which his daughters used when learning to walk -- required 6 or 7 years to get to its destination. And each time he gets a haircut, his lengthy whiskers also get a trim. He's thought about cutting it, but his daughters, who've never seen him without it, won't let him. He usually braids it and tucks it into his jumpsuit before taking flight.

That beard is one reason Kurt Gaebel remembers so vividly the first time he saw Booth after moving from his homeland of Germany to DeLand more than 17 years ago. "I kept seeing him and wondering who he was," said Gaebel, president of the DeLand-based National Skydiving League. "He looked just like a member of ZZ Top."

Gaebel was impressed. "He's likable and charismatic," he said. "I just think he is one of the most innovative and creative minds in town."

His daughters, who aren't easily impressed, think their dad is pretty cool, too.

"They didn't care that I made the History Channel's National Geographic for the bat expedition," he said. "But they were thrilled when some video of me sky diving with a disc jockey made it onto MTV."

Charlene Hager-Van Dyke can be reached at 386-851-7927 or chagervandyke@orlandosentinel.com.

Quote

(side bar)
Since 1984, Bill Booth has made the following inventions and redesigns:


Streamlined parachutes and reserve chutes: Created a teardrop-shaped container that holds and deploys both parachutes; Rreserve parachutes previously were worn on the jumper's front.


Hand-Deployed Pilot Chute: Allows the jumper to deploy the main chute quicker and more reliably in the event of malfunction; Tthe device replaces the antiquated ripcord system.


Three-Ring Release: Simplifies the steps and saves time for a jumper to release from a malfunctioning parachute; what used to take a jumper six separate motions with both hands now only requires one motion with one hand.


Improved Tandem System: Updated the previous Sigma System, eliminating half of all the causes of tandem fatalities.


Vector parachute container: Improved the old container system, making them resistant to wind, to help prevent them from being ripped apart when jumpers dove head-first, standing up or on their backs.


SkyHook RSL: Attached the reserve parachute to the main chute so that the reserve is pulled out in half a second instead of three seconds in the event of malfunction, saving the jumper hundreds of feet and allowing for deployment in as little as 75 feet.
(end of side bar)

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[robskydiv 0]

Fantastic article. I enjoyed reading it very much. Thanks Quade for reminding us of our roots. I can't see how I'd be skydiving today without such pioneers like Bill Booth.

[b1jercat 0]

I wonder if He's the guy in the mal photos they showed us in aff?
blue skies
jerry

[sunshine 2]

Awesome read, thanks for posting it.

___________________________________________
meow

I get a Mike hug! I get a Mike hug!

[Iflyme 0]

Inspiring article about an inspiring man. And I am honoured that Bill visits with us "skydivers of the WWW" here at DZ.com!

(hey -- we should put that on a t-shirt!)

[flyhi 24]

Quote

Tthe device replaces the antiquated ripcord system.

Is that why we always do a pin check on our reserve?

Nice article. You can't really appreciate Bill Booth until you've seen his video in Japanese. Oh-hi-o.

Shit happens. And it usually happens because of physics.

[katiebear21 0]

Great article! Before I started skydiving, I went up to RW and TK gave me a tour of the shop. I remember seeing some of the North Pole photos in his office and was completely amazed! I had no idea who he was and have learned so much since then. Much respect to Bill!

Katie
Get your PMS glass necklace here

[kyros1 0]

I am very glad that I have met Bill Booth during my several visits in Deland. Its a real honor to meet someone that has already served so many things in the sport. Specially, when you come from Greece!!! I can remember during my last visit, and at my last day, when we went for lunch with Xeno, Petro and Irena and Bill Booth showed up joined us and introduced sky hook. It was even before the commercial release of it. Imagine coming back to Greece and spread knowledge directly from the source. I was thrilled!!!

Cheers Bill and as we said you are always welcomed to visit us in Greece

Kyros