I grew up as a Tom Boy with the nickname Butch, and I didn’t play with dolls. When I’d see a John Wayne movie, I’d say "if he can do that, I can too." I don’t know if I ever saw John Wayne pilot an airplane, but I logged some 5 hours toward getting a license in a single engine Cherokee Piper Plane. I didn’t have the money or inclination to complete the flying course to get the pilot’s license. That is a rich man’s sport.

The ultimate in scariness is parachuting, and the lingering question "will I, won’t I, will I die?"

When I was a stewardess for American Airlines I had a lot of time to think about "getting down". We flew jets, and I didn’t think anyone could bail out of those passenger planes. However, sometime in the 70’s there was a rash of plane hijackings, and there was a guy who robbed a plane and bailed out of the rear door of the plane (727?) over the mountains out West. The authorities never found the guy, but found his parachute. This fugitive became somewhat of a cult hero for a while, and the authorities blocked the back door access on aircraft with that configuration.

One day I decided to go play "John Wayne goes parachuting." I called around and found a parachuting school just across the river in Lakewood, New Jersey. Before going parachuting I wanted to discuss my adventure with a CBS producer/friend from the Cronkite Show, Russ Bensley. Russ was in the hospital with tubes running in and out of his body. He had gone to Vietnam for CBS News and had been shot up two times in less than 48 hours. Russ and his camera crew had gone to Khi Sahn which was under siege. He got hit by shrapnel within hours.

Russ said he remembers laying in the stretcher being carried away to an evacuation plane and an NBC cameraman was filming him on his stretcher and behind the NBC cameraman was an ABC cameraman filming the NBC cameraman filming the CBS man being carried away on the stretcher. Russ said he just wished he had a camera with him on his stretcher so he could film the NBC and ABC guys filming him. Don’t know what happened to the CBS cameraman, but if he didn’t get hit by shrapnel he was probably there filming all the above too.

The military flew Russ to Da Nang Hospital which was part of a huge U.S. military outpost. The hospital gets Russ patched up. He goes to sleep. The sirens start blaring. The Red Alert goes on. The VC start shelling Da Nang. As a precaution, the hospital placed a large metal protector over Russ. The shelling continues for some time.

The Red Alert goes off. The hospital employees take the metal protectors off the patients. The VC start shelling again. Russ gets hit again.

And I had advised Russ to go to Vietnam, and here I am seeking advice on parachuting. What’s wrong with this picture?

Early the next morning I take a bus over to Lakewood, New Jersey to the parachute school. It was a three hour course with classes starting at 9:00 a.m., lunch, and then you jump in the afternoon. That was the first time I ever sat on the front row in a classroom.

The class is made up of about 15 men either from the Reserve or John Wayne types like me. The Jumpmaster put us through various training exercises as to "how to fall". We were wearing our combat shoes, jumpsuits and helmets and would jump off a platform about 3-4 feet. The name of the game to keep from breaking your legs when you land is to "keep your knees slightly bent and your feet together". When you land you practice falling to the right or left. In addition, they tell you not, not, to look at the ground as you are landing or as it is approaching. The tendency of most people is to raise their feet up as if to avoid earth. Then you break your legs.

I think I’ve got the basics. Let’s go Captain.

We break for lunch before we jump. We were all giddy and scared. I had no lunch. Food was the last thing on my mind. One student ate three hot dogs. He said he was really hungry. Then, we are all quiet.

Now, it is Showtime. They rev up the Norseman plane. It is an old Canadian, twin engine with door taken off and holds about 10 people. The instructors suit us up with our parachutes, all the time giving us more instructions. It looked and felt so military like, like we were going to parachute behind enemy lines. The engine roared. They told us to put on our helmets. We all did. Then someone said "Vivian, you have yours on backwards". That broke that spell and I was embarrassed, but no time. The Jumpmaster’s command for us to get aboard could barely be heard over the roar of the airplane.

We pack onto the plane. Everyone has a seat. I was close to the door. Well, everyone was close to the door. There was no door, and it was a small plane. We taxi down the runway. All is okay just like a regular plane. The airplane slowly, slowly climbs up and up and it is really getting high. And I thought "and my God, I did this to jump out of this thing, have I gone mad?"

I was sitting there scared to death looking at the other students. You were like some how afraid when you met someone else’s eyes.... you quickly avoided eye contact. We were all in our own private hell and a smile or an acknowledgment from a fellow student wouldn’t help your courage.

The plane reaches about 3,000 feet, slows down, and starts to circle over the drop zone. The Jumpmaster gets up moving toward the door, hooking up some lines, and I remember thinking "be careful, you don’t fall" and once again realized why I was there. The handsome Jumpmaster holds out a roll of candy to me and says with a wicked smile "You want a life saver?" Cute, cute, as I laugh hysterically.

The Jumpmaster at the door calls up the first student, hooks up his line. The jumper sits in the door with his feet on the steps facing the front, the wind. You jump into the wind. The plane slows. The Jumpmaster tells the guy to jump. The guy does. The plane picks up speed to make another circle, slows, another guy jumps. The plane starts the next circle. Number three jumper is me.

I go sit in the door, take the position. I’m looking up and down and around and it is so beautiful and so high up. The Jumpmaster tells me to jump. I stand up a bit, take the position, looked around somewhere and then sat down and said "no thank you."

The Jumpmaster and I looked deeply into each other’s eyes and I said "but I do". "You want to make another circle?" he asked. I said "yes". I am still sitting in the door enjoying the view as the plane goes around again.

Remember the student who ate the three hot-dogs at lunch. He comes lunging over to the door to throw up. I think he was supposed to be the last jumper. His throw up does not go out the plane door, it goes all over me. So, here I am sitting in a puddle of barf. That did make my decision to jump easier.

So, when the Jumpmaster said to go, I jumped into the wind and that was the last thing I remembered being or seeing. Then I heard a voice saying "Vivian, look at your chute. Vivian, look at your chute." I looked up. I see this beautiful massive parachute doing what it is supposed to be doing - hanging there. I look down and see the beautiful cultivated fields with patches of woods stretching for miles and miles. It was sort of like being in a swing. I swung my legs back and forth. The voice was from the one-way radio I had on my uniform connected with the Jumpmaster. I float on down like a bird and am supposed to land in one of the huge aforementioned clear, clean fields.

However, the wind is taking me into the woods. They said in class that a tree is not considered dangerous unless it is over 30 feet. Whatever that means, but these upcoming trees don’t look very friendly.

Well, I floated on down, brushed up against and kicked away from a big tree, landed in the proper position, took a roll and stopped up against this big tree. I thought "wow, I’m still alive."

Within a few minutes the parachute center employees arrived, packed up the parachute, and I jumped onto their truck which went around and picked up the rest of the jumpers before heading back to the Center. We all congratulated one another, and that day we were all heroes in our own minds. I however doubted my status and thought I’d better make another jump this day.

And I did and ended up in the woods again.

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