Death-Defying Dive Falls Short

--What was supposed to be a routine practice session for sky divers became a life-and-death drama in the skies over Clewiston, Fla. Eddie Turner, 33, and Frank Farnan, 45, jumped out of a plane at 13,000 feet with other members of a sky-diving team. “One of the divers came in too fast and hit (Farnan) in the head and knocked him out,” Turner recalled at his home on Lake Norman near Catawba, N.C. Turner caught up with the free-falling Farnan, went into the “dead spider position, holding out my arms and legs trying to cause a drag and slow my fall so I could go back to reach him.” Then, Turner said, he grabbed Farnan and pulled his rip cord before pulling his own cord. “I estimate we had a little less than 10 seconds before we both would have hit the ground,” he said. Turner, a pilot for USAir, has been sky-diving for 14 years. Farnan of Lake Worth, Fla., who works in Delta Air Lines customer service, has been in the sport for 25 years.

--The auction in New York of household goods and memorabilia of the late film director Cecil B. De Mille was a hit. The event brought $710,919, nearly $300,000 above the pre-sale value estimate of Christie’s gallery. The star of the show was a Gothic revival oak kneehole desk used by De Mille for writing and editing, which was bought by an anonymous bidder for $121,000, the highest price paid for any of the 340 items on sale. The desk had been valued before the sale at $15,000. Other top prices were $83,500 paid by a Texas collector for Norman Rockwell’s portrait of Victor Mature in the role of Samson tearing down the temple, and $46,200 from a California collector for a pair of flintlock pistols used by Gary Cooper in “The Unconquered.” Proceeds will go to the De Mille estate. Most of the items came from the 50-room mansion in Los Angeles where De Mille lived for 47 years. He died in 1959.

--Andrew Cuomo, son of New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, has taken a cut in pay in order to work full time on building housing for the homeless. “I believe in my heart and soul this is the right thing to do,” Cuomo, 30, said in New Rochelle, N.Y. “I don’t want to do this forever, but for now, there’s nothing I’d rather do.” Cuomo reportedly earned more than $225,000 annually as a partner in the law firm of Blutrich, Falcone & Miller. His salary as head of HELP, a not-for-profit organization, will be between $50,000 and $60,000, said Jeffrey Sachs, director of operations for the group. Cuomo founded HELP three years ago to provide transitional housing for women with children as an alternative to welfare hotels.