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Dave had many "saves" himself and when you multiply that by all the riggers he trained the numbers would be in the thousands. A life well lived.

Dave was one of the greats in skydiving and parachute rigging. Always cheerful. Always helpful. I'm going to miss him.

He was 86. We’ll miss you Dave.

Ummmm......yeaaah.

I agree, it can definitely make it harder, especially at lower jump numbers. But there are always exceptions. A friend of ours is quite large, at least 250, always has been. He has many thousands of jumps, 30 plus years in sport and he holds multiple RW and CRW world records. He dresses for success; suits with lots of drag help a lot. I'm a feather butt and we have done some jumps together, including him officiating my wedding jump. The only fall rate issues were me if I wasn't wearing a snug suit (ie I didn't dress for success). But yeah, most of the larger jumpers I've known haven't stayed in the sport very long, at least partly because their learning curve is so steep due to their size and the fact that not every jumper, especially ones at about the same jump numbers, can keep up with them in freefall. But even if they don't do a lot of jumps, they got to experience skydiving as a skydiver not as a tandem passenger. That's not a bad thing :-)

Rest in peace Dave. You will forever be a friend, idol, mentor and inspiration to me. Like many, Dave trained me initially to be a rigger. After a few years I got good at it. One night in Eloy Dave, Weird Wayne, Dave Mahoney and myself were sitting around a campfire. Mahoney and I had the loft there at the time. Listening to Dewolf and His Weirdness discuss so many things that were way above the heads of Mahoney and mine was one of the greatest treats of my life. Respect, Love and Peace to you my friend. Mahoney and I still talk about that night. "There's a pork chop in every can"

You add "indirectly" and you would have a LOT of people.

Hi Gary, That is what I will always remember about Dave. A fun guy to be around, Jerry Baumchen

I'd love to see a show of hands as to how many of us "directly" owe our lives to this man. I'm one

An 8-year old girl went to the office with her father on 'Take Your Kid to Work Day'. As they were walking around the office, the young girl started crying and getting very cranky. Her father asked her what is wrong. As the staff gathered round, she sobbed loudly, "Daddy, where are all the clowns you said you work with?"

A cowboy was herding his cows in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?" The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?" The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves." "That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the cowboy. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?" The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?" You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says the cowboy. "Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?" "No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows... Now give me back my dog."

The definition of a sadist? Someone who does nice things for a masochist.

That's so cool. Can I be on your ash dive?