50 years ago, on July 14, 1973, I did!!  It was during the middle of my time at the Navy’s nuclear power school in Bainbridge, Maryland.  The amount of information presented and the fast pace of trying to cram it into our heads caused some guys to commit suicide.  A couple of us (four to be exact) who were also stressed to the max decided not to take that route, but thought we needed some other significant diversion to clear our heads.  So we considered different options until we finally all agreed that what we needed to do was to jump out of an airplane.  Sounds crazy, but that’s exactly what we did.  We decided to go to a small place called Ripcord Paracenter in Burlington County, New Jersey, about an hour’s drive from the nuke school in Maryland.  After receiving about a half hour’s worth of training, we geared up, and all went up in a small plane.  On the way up into the sky, we each started to have second thoughts, but the Ripcord guy assured us it would be fun.  Once high enough (and believe me it was high enough – everything looked so tiny when looking out the window), we each took our turn at jumping out of the plane.  When it was my turn the most terrifying 10 seconds of my life occurred as I watched the ground below start to come up at me!! 

Thankfully my chute (an old military one that looked like it was from World War II) opened (and without a partial or full malfunction which they told us could happen) and I began sailing in the wind – a fantastic feeling.  Especially going from being totally terrified to then being in one of the most blessed moments in my life.  It is something that is hard to explain.  When I hit the ground I thought I broke both my ankles it hurt so bad, however, I got over that quickly and began jumping and hollering for joy. 

So luckily I survived the experience and about four months later, I married my forever wife, Terrie Wise (the love of my life), and as they say the rest is history; going on to nuclear reactor prototype training in West Milton, New York, and later being assigned to the nuclear submarine USS Billfish (SSN-676) out of Groton, Connecticut.