Jim McIntyre, “Mac”, a Maryland Eastern Shore native with a waterman’s accent, was our instructor. There was a lot of information to impart and Mac gave it all to us at a rapid pace. He allowed questions but he didn’t linger. We had to know how to board the airplane, how to move in it, how to exit, what to do outside the airplane, how to operate the parachute, and how to land. Those were the things that we would have to do but we were also taught what to do in case of an aircraft emergency and if the parachute malfunctioned. To learn all that in one day and then make a jump wasn’t easy but Mac got us through it.

Because of the United States Parachute Association requirements on what had to be taught and other restrictions, like the weather, the drop zone didn’t guarantee that everyone in the class would jump the same day as the course. As it turned out I was the last one in our class to jump that day and Gabe was the first one who didn’t. I returned for my second jump the following week and I made over one hundred jumps the next spring and summer but Gabe never went back and never did make a sky dive.

As my jumpmaster, Jim West, put the harness / container and reserve parachute on me I worried about what was going to happen. During the day I’d seen scores of parachutes open and people land without incident and the course was thorough so I felt good about my chances but I was still scared. By the time we climbed to 2800 feet and I scooted to the spot next to the door of the 170 Cessna the butterflies were beating furiously and when the door opened and I looked down I was very afraid. What I was about to do seemed most unnatural.

Despite the fear and the noise I heard the commands and followed the order to, “Get your feet out!”

The wind and engine noise were forces that resisted my will and movements but they didn’t prevent me from doing what Jim commanded, neither did the fear, which increased as I began to actually commit to the opposite of what my instincts were frantically trying to stop me from doing.

With the fear growing but under control I heard the next command. “Get OUT!”, so I stood on my left leg and rotated on that foot to get all the way out of the plane, face forward and take hold of the wing strut. There I waited for the final order to do what every neuron was telling me not to do. The sight of the ground below, the spinning propeller right in front of me and the deafening roar of the wind and the engine made it seem like a very long wait too.

When the order to, “GO!”, and the slap on the thigh came, I didn’t hesitate. Like a sprung trap I pushed off, arched by body and looked up at the airplane as Mac had told me. As I dropped, the static line, which was in Jim's hand and attached to a ring just inside the door frame played out. At the end of a very short drop the lower end of the static line opened the container and pulled the parachute out as Mac said it would and the sudden stop that he said to expect occurred, but what happened after all those anticipated and fully described events was a surprise. It was the quiet and the peace. The contrast between the roar of the wind blast and the fear of falling, with the silence and relief of being suspended in the air half a mile above the Earth was the most wonderful shock imaginable.

I could still hear the plane but barely and it faded to nothingness in seconds. Then there was almost no sound at all. Under a round parachute with almost no forward speed I was in utterly still air. Nineteen-years-old, suspended two-thousand feet above the world at sunset, in a slow descent, I was filled with a sense of accomplishment and the thrill of freedom. I was only able to enjoy it for a half-a-minute before more of Mac’s instructions had to be carried out but hanging there like that, motionless, quiet and safe after all the noise and anxiety was a wonderful sensation. Striving to recreate that feeling and those thirty seconds shaped the rest of my life.