Summer 1994: I remember when I saw John at Quantum Leap Skydiving Center in Sullivan MO. At the time, he was helping Doug Marion get around and meet as many people as possible to work his way towards central conference director. Actually, I thought John himself was deserving of that position since he had been around skydiving so long.

I wanted to practice my head-down fallrate and proximity control with John falling as base. At first, he didn't know how he would be able to keep up a fast enough fallrate and then with some quick ingenuity he thought that he would just sit up and tuck his legs under himself. During the dive, he sat up and I began working towards him in my head-down approach. I was concentrating hard on my proximity and fallrate control. When we landed, John was astonished in exactly the same way that I was back in December 1993 when Philippe Vallaud went into a head-down position by surprise just in front of me. Just as I had stopped functioning normally in my excitement, John couldn't sleep that night and in the following week drew an illustration in remembrance of our jump. I still keep that illustration close to me. (It traveled with me everywhere in the world where I taught freestyle courses.) From then on, I wanted to teach John everything I knew about VRW to share with him the joys of freeflying. I strongly emphasized the basics as with those well learned, I knew John would be so thrilled to experience a completely free world of 3D flight. I had chosen John because I could feel that he really liked it.

I, now, realize that I wasn't catching on to the idea that John enjoyed every dive no matter what. I think this was mostly because I was so competitive in freestyle and also I'm younger in the sport and in life in general and have not yet come to that phase. I became so focused on wanting to show him the cool stuff the Philippe Vallaud did with me in December 1993.

Spring 1995: John invited me out to the Greater Kansas City Skydiving Club for my first visit there to teach a half day class on Cross Training and a modified version of the original MEES program. The weather was poor that weekend and as John drove me about picking up meals, etc., I caught on to the realization that the GKCSC was just about right in Kansas City. He began to tell me about the night jumps and I remember him gesturing his hand painting the magical glow of the lights over the houses from his fingers as we drove in the night.

I'd wanted to do night jumps over a city since 1985 and during that coming week John told me on the phone, "you're never going to jump if you don't come on out!" as we discussed the possible deteriorating weekend weather forecast. During the night jumps, John spoke of the gremlins in his characteristic way. He saw how the city was like a galaxy and that the shopping mall looking like a star ship. In fact, he told me how he saw Kansas City as a distant galaxy when he made night jumps at a DZ (Harison?? was it??) farther away than GKCSC before GKCSC opened its doors.

Each time, I came out to GKCSC, John always made me feel welcome. "GKCSC is the place for the 'refugee skydivers,'" he always told me. I always walked onto the DZ smiling. We ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together and walked together telling skydiving stories and how it "felt" to be doing the various dives. We shared our problems in close company as well.

One day, returning to the airport it was very windy. John told me about how you can lean really forward in the wind if you find the right hills at the right angles. He told me about the cliffs in Ireland and that it might even be possible to fly in the vertical wind created by the wind storms against these cliff walls. I, actually, dreamed of making a vacation with him to actually pursue this crazy idea!

As John's mother, I know that all his life, whatever John got involved in he went at it 110%. Even as a small child he was driven. One entire summer he spent every day building a tent out of a blanket and clothespins in the backyard, redesigning it every day until it was perfect...and then never stepped inside it once he was satisfied. I was always surprised at how he stuck with skydiving over all those years...although I suppose it changed so much over those years that he was always trying to perfect the next step...and even developing some of them.

We shared a home over the last few years and he was very good with me, and Belinda also, after they married. I was going through many changes at that time and his patience was certainly a virtue. Nothing is as painful as burying one of your children, and I miss him, as everyone does, everyday. But I find solace in knowing he was doing something he loved with people he loved when he died.