Skydiver on a Collision Course With Heroism in the Arizona Sky : ‘She Would Have Died and I Just Could Not Let That Happen’

In a life where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for fear or regrets, only decision. --A skydiving homily taken

from “Don Juan”

Even master skydivers--those indifferent to the daring and fatalities of their sport--have paused to admire one colleague’s decision to deny the hunter.

The rescue: a vertical, head-down dive in pursuit of an unconscious novice who had collided with another freefalling skydiver--then opening the woman’s parachute less than 10 seconds before she would have hit the ground.

Gritty, Cocksure

The rescuer: Gregory Robertson, a gritty, cocksure, 35-year-old electrical engineer for AT&T; whose mid-air save on April 18 has already earned his company’s Theodore E. Vail Award (worth $10,000) for exemplary public service. Now the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission is reviewing the incident.

The rescued: Debbie Williams, 31, a fifth-grade teacher from Post, Tex., now at Humana Hospital, Abilene, Tex. She was flown there Monday from Scottsdale Memorial Hospital near here. She remains in fair condition. But Williams has her life.

Robertson’s life, on the other hand, is barely his own.

There’s an agent-entrepreneur in Reno orchestrating his interviews and protecting his rights in case a movie is offered. There has been a photo reenactment for the tabloids and two pages of coverage by the London Daily Mirror. Next month’s issue of Parachutist, the magazine of the U.S. Parachute Assn., will have Robertson on its cover as: “An American Hero.”

Robertson doesn’t see himself quite so loftily.

What he did, he agrees, was an exercise in instinctive decision making and precise timing rooted in the experience and training of his 1,500-jump career. He and Williams were lucky, he said, that there were seconds and altitude to spare and that he knew what could be done and that he has a facility for functioning easily under stress.

But would Robertson have knowingly given his life to save Williams? No.

“I would not have put myself in the ground for her,” he said. He was back at the desert stage of the drama, Skydive Arizona, a sport parachute center at Coolidge Municipal Airport southeast of here. It had been a day of more interviews, more tributes, more photographs. “Yeah . . . the point would have come, where, exactly, I don’t know, but there would have been a point where I would have just fired my own reserve to save myself.

“But I had the time. I had a few seconds to spare there and it worked. When I started, no, I did not know if it would work. But I had to try. She was going in clean. She would have died and I just could not let that happen. I could not live with myself for just letting someone die and not trying.”

But he did try. He did not let Williams die.

An ‘Easter Miracle’

So a friend is calling the rescue an Easter miracle. In European newspapers, a headline superlative for Robertson has become repetitious: Superman. Jumpers are telephoning daily asking him to detail the full, firsthand choreography of the rescue. In case, they say, the opportunity might one day be theirs.

Last week, as Robertson bundled his canopy after his third jump of the morning, an airline captain came to call. Wayne Roberts trains Lufthansa pilots under a teaching contract with a PSA subsidiary. He had an envelope for Robertson.

“I just passed the hat around the guys, just a buck apiece so Robertson can have one on us,” Roberts explained. “Most of us (instructors) were in the military and we know that this (rescue) is the kind of thing you get the Medal of Honor for.

“He was on the spot and said: ‘I can do this thing.’ And he did it. That’s going downtown on the first day. And there’s some poetry here about not counting the cost.”

Before things went wrong, everything went inexplicably, fatefully right.

There had been ignition problems with the antique DC-4 transport that was to carry 120 skydivers aloft for a series of formation drops. But to compensate for the delay, the pilot gave the jumpers another 1,000 feet of altitude.

Any of a dozen experts among the 420 divers at this Easter meet could have flown as load organizer. But Gregory Robertson, a man whose idea of the perfect 35th birthday party was to make 35 jumps in seven hours, the U.S. Parachute Assn.’s safety and training administrator for the drop zone, decided to take the flight.

Debbie Williams might have been just another skydiver of unknown skills and no particular need for supervision. But earlier, Robertson had seen Williams having trouble repacking her chute, stopped to assist, discovered she was a novice with only 50 jumps and had made a mental note to keep an eye on her.

And so he tucked Williams and her six-jumper group in the front of the DC-4. That way they would exit close to last and behind experts doing 12- and 20-way formation jumps.

At 10:30 a.m., at 13,500 feet above Coolidge Airport, the jumpers were briefed and ready. Williams. Guy Fitzwater of Van Nuys. Alex Rodriguez of Midland, Tex. Blair Oaks, Gary Bellamy and Ken Neville, all from the San Diego area. Each had paid $15 for the airlift.

The group’s plan was to exit the airplane, link hands and form a freefalling circle. They would disengage, make individual, 360-degree turns, then reform the circle prior to breakaway and chute deployment at 3,000 feet.

Robertson watched them exit.

“So I left . . . yahoo , swoosh . . . out the door I went, about a second or two behind them. I looked at them. Three of them (Oaks, Bellamy and Neville) were linked together, a fourth, who was Guy (Fitzwater), had been linked, had fallen off and was slightly below them.

“I noticed Debbie, and her body form for what she wants to do is excellent. It was a standard dive up until this point. Nothing weird yet.”

Fitzwater, by arching in the air as if sprawling over a barrel, had slowed his descent, rising above the formation. It brought him close to Williams. Then Rodriguez docked with the three-person formation. And he was too fast, too hard.

“He held on to the people and turned the whole formation vertical,” Robertson continued, “instead of being complete, nice and round and stable, it (the formation) is vertical.

“It’s called funneling. There’s less wind resistance, hence they accelerate downward. It (the formation) just smokes out of the sky.”

The sudden descent from 10,000 feet stranded Fitzwater and Williams 400 feet above the formation. Robertson was 10 feet higher than the couple and 50 feet to one side. He was certain of one thing. Williams did not have the experience to dive 400 feet and make a confident docking with the group.

“To get that much vertical distance from a standing start, with the time left and everything, I said: ‘Well, she ain’t going to make it.’ So I decided to go and get a two-way with her because this actually was what I considered a dangerous situation.

“You’ve got two groups of people, relatively inexperienced, at two very different skydiving levels, separated by about 500 feet and almost directly over each other. When you get skydivers vertical like that, and they’re novices, you’ve got to remember that these (low) people are going to open up parachutes before these (high) people.

“It’s just kinda something you avoid.”

And avoidance, Robertson thought, would be possible if he could link up with Williams and Fitzwater and assume control of the high group.

Before he could move, Fitzwater, arms back, streamlined, went into a shallow dive. He was attempting to join the formation. Williams followed. So did Robertson. If they could dock with the group, the problem would be defused.

It was not to be. For Williams began turning.

“They are now heading toward each other,” Robertson said. “Guy’s head is pointed straight down, looking at the formation. And to the best of my knowledge, (Williams’) head is pointed straight down looking at the formation.

“They’re not looking at each other. And they hit.”

It was, Robertson estimated, a 50-miles-per-hour impact at 9,000 feet.

It dislodged another portion of providence.

For Fitzwater, although stunned, did not lose consciousness. Williams, her face and chest smashing into Fitzwater’s backpack, was knocked cold. But the collision bounced her toward Robertson.

His immediate assessment: “Debbie was a rag doll. I look at Guy and I see him return to stability. I saw one arm come in and . . . he was checking his altimeter. Then she (Williams) passes (30 feet) under me, she’s on her back now and she has started to spin. I can see a whole lot of blood on her face.

“I made the determinations. He (Fitzwater) is OK. She’s out cold. She’s dead. There was no movement of the muscles that I could see. I realized I had to get to her. And I thought: ‘I wonder if I can do this.’ ”

To close on Williams falling at 140-miles-per-hour, Robertson had to become a 180-miles-per-hour human bullet. And for a blind, five-second count.

“At the end of five seconds, I pull my head up. I looked to locate her and she is still down below me. But she’s not accelerating away. I have now matched her speed.”

Right on the Money

Robertson makes another time and distance calculation. He dives for another five seconds. Once more, he falls faster than the takeoff speed of a jet fighter. Then he pulls his head and shoulders back to transfer some of his vertical velocity to horizontal speed. He’s right on the money.

“She’s still below me, but I’m approaching rapidly. She’s on her back spinning at about a revolution per second, clockwise. I was moving toward her real fast, about 50 miles per hour, which is basically what I wanted.”

It has been 15 seconds since the collision. They have dropped more than 3,000 feet. But that’s only Robertson’s guess.

“I wasn’t looking at altimeters or anything like that. I still had my peripheral (visual reference). I know that when the horizon is down here, I’m OK. When the horizon is up here, I’m in trouble.

“But I could see that my peripheral horizon was OK. My main focus is on her. I get down beside her, probably four feet out and probably a foot above her. Watching.”

He could see Williams’ right arm moving. Was she trying to pull her ripcord? If so, Robertson did not want to foul the deployment. “I then decided: ‘No, that’s the wind blowing her arm. I started moving in, slowly. I let the feet swing by me.”

More microsecond thinking. To deploy the main chute on Williams’ rig would require reaching across her body, opening Velcro fasteners and manually extracting the pilot chute into the slipstream. The alternative was to pull the ripcord of a smaller reserve chute (also contained in Williams’ backpack) with its spring-loaded pilot and cleaner, faster opening.

Altitude Warning Device

Robertson should have had one card up his sleeve. His Dytter. It’s an altitude warning device, a beeper operated by barometric pressure. Robertson had set his to sound when he passed through 3,500 feet--1,500 feet above the recommended base altitude for safe deployment.

“I just do not remember hearing it,” he continued. “But it must have sounded and could have been what made me realize, subconsciously . . . that I had lost total awareness of my altitude. I still had horizon, which was telling me that it was time to do something. I had no idea if I was at three grand (3,000 feet) or two five (2,500 feet) but I knew it was time to do something.

“I either had to save myself, save her and myself. . . . I had to do something. Right then. There was no more time.

“A slight twinge of my own fear and thinking: ‘Am I going to die?’ And then I just went: ‘I’m getting the ripcord.’ I shoved everything else aside, straightened my legs, drove in, grabbed her ripcord with my right hand and grabbed her main lift (chest harness) with my left hand.

“I push her into a sitting position because this will allow the pilot chute to come cleanly off her back. I yanked the ripcord. I feel it come loose.

“I extract it all of the way, release her and mentally thought: ‘There’s your shot, chick.’ ”

Williams’ chute bloomed. So did Robertson’s.

“We figured it out later, I got her open at about 2,700 (feet) or so.”

A Doctor in the Crowd

Williams, slumped in her harness, unconscious and badly injured, landed near a camping area at the drop zone. Further fortune. There was a doctor in the crowd, also a Marine Corps medic.

Within 15 minutes, an Arizona Department of Public Safety helicopter was evacuating the broken skydiver to Scottsdale Memorial Hospital.

Robertson walked into a hangar. His anger, fear and adrenaline were spent in senseless yelling at the general stupidity of skydivers. He cursed Williams, the ripcord in his hand, at anyone having the audacity to almost die in his drop zone.

Days later, a quieter Robertson, a Phoenix bachelor who rides a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and grows strawberries, reflected on the rescue.

“The most honorable thing in life is giving your life for a person or a cause, realizing that it is more important for this to continue than for you to survive,” he said. “Like the soldier who dives on a grenade to save his buddies. That’s clean.

“What I did was clean. But I don’t think there was as much danger as the media claims. The danger was after I opened her chute and had to get down myself and I almost hit the other parachutes.”

Last weekend, Robertson visited Williams in the hospital. Instructor to the last, he critiqued her dive and analyzed the causes of the accident. He met her fiance, Bill Rothe, another skydiver. Their gratitude was endless. So Robertson adapted a modest line from a fictional hero, Crocodile Dundee.

“Buy me a Bud Lite and we’ll call it quits.”

Guy Fitzwater landed to what looked like flashbulbs and what felt like a cannonball through his chest. It was pain from the collision with Williams. His left knee was a water melon.

The 51-year-old painting contractor spent three days in a hospital near the drop zone before returning to Van Nuys. Last week, at Encino Hospital, surgeons repaired the knee. Fitzwater, a grandfather, hunter, archer and veteran of 94 skydives, will be on crutches for months.

“The accident has made me realize that we’re so fragile and you can go just like that,” he said. “The positive part is that Gregory did save her life and it could maybe, one of these days, inspire someone else to say: ‘Hey, it can be done.’ ”

Before leaving Arizona, Fitzwater also visited Williams.

“We talked. I said: ‘Debbie, we’ve just got to stop bumping into each other.’ ”

Debbie Williams’ injuries, it has been said, are consistent with hitting a brick wall at 40 miles an hour. A fractured skull. Nine broken ribs. Punctured lung. Bruised kidney. Lacerated liver.

Although unconscious from the point of collision and with no recall of her rescue or landing, Williams’ emotional projections have been vivid and troubling.

Yet this 5-foot, 115-pound toughie is out of intensive care, she is walking, laughing, fretting about a broken tooth and is restless to return home. And to her winter-summer challenges of skiing and scuba diving.

Will she--as Robertson and Rothe and others believe she will--skydive again?

“No,” she has decided. “I’m just not interested.”