Loss Brings Out Chutists’ Fatalistic Camaraderie
The Perris Valley Bar and Grill is more than an airport saloon, the regulars say. After free-falling to earth at 135 m.p.h., after deploying your chute and touching down, there’s no place like Mom’s to share a cold one. Or two.
Mom runs the place, serving Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners to the sky divers who create their own “family,” pursuing a sport some liken to an addiction. Here, the professional “Sky Gods” like Dan B-C and the lowly “loft bats” from the Ghetto aren’t exactly equal, but they can still be comrades.
On a wall here are three plaques, dating back to 1977, in memory of sky divers who fell to their deaths. But a poster nearby better expresses the spirit of the place: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, life is short, so party we must.”
On Thursday, one day after an airplane loaded with sky divers crashed shortly after takeoff, killing 16 people and severely injuring six others, the mood was somber. Accidents happen sometimes, but never before had one involved so many friends.
“I lost four friends. It’s painful for all of us,” said Scott Wakefield, a 35-year-old instructor at the Perris Valley Sky Diving School. But like others, Wakefield said he wasn’t afraid to keep going up; in fact, they would have performed a memorial jump Thursday if the small, single-runway airstrip hadn’t been shut down during an investigation by federal aviation authorities.
Richard Stuart, the video cameraman for the championship-caliber sky-diving team Air Moves, which was aboard the plane, said he missed the ill-fated flight only because of an equipment problem. Stuart, an Australian--wearing a shirt that said “Don’t Worry, Mate!”--said he won’t hesitate to go up again.
“I try not to analyze it too much. These things happen. Airplanes crash,” he said. “It wasn’t a sky-diving accident.”
Stuart’s fallen teammates were the “Sky Gods.” James Ian Layne, 21, died at a hospital after the crash. Three others--Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld, 30; Troy Widgery, 25; and Tom Falzone--were hospitalized in critical or serious condition.
Brodsky-Chenfeld--or “Dan B-C”--is team captain and, with Stuart, a former member of the defending U.S. champion team, The Fource. They formed Air Moves last August.
“There are a lot of good divers here, but everyone knows the Air Moves. They were smooth. They were cool. They knew they were good, but they didn’t show off,” said Tony, a 21-year-old sky diver from South Africa.
“I’m considered a nothing here because I have 85 jumps. But anyone from the team would come over and say, ‘Let’s go for a jump’ or give me pointers. We were the next generation of sky divers, and they knew that.”
Despite their skills in free-fall aerobatics, the members of Air Moves weren’t getting rich. Stuart lives in a van at the airfield. Some other hard-core jumpers live in a ragged trailer park called the Ghetto. A few pack chutes for $5 each to scrounge the $16 fee for each drop. Wakefield calls them “loft bats” because “loft” is sky-diver lingo for the area where chutes are packed. And “bats just hang around.”
“Sky divers are the richest poor people you ever met. They’re always driving beat-up old cars and don’t even have a dollar for a beer, but they’re here sky-diving and loving it,” said Mick Woodward, a 32-year-old native of England.
“We live day by day,” Stuart said. “It’s something you have to do. It’s an addiction.”
Among the victims were several Perris stalwarts, including instructors Scott Border, 31; Larry Fatino; John Mitchell, 43; and video camera operators David Clark, Geoffrey Anderson, 26, and Jacqueline Downs, 27. The only woman aboard the flight, Downs also worked for Mom behind the bar.
Shirley McKenna, 56, is Mom. She found solace remembering a recent conversation with Mitchell--that if he were to die sky-diving, he would have died doing what he loved.
Wakefield said that the Perris “drop zone” draws parachutists from around the world. Inside Mom’s, foreign accents are entirely welcome.
Now at Mom’s they may be hanging a new plaque. Already a blood drive has begun, as has a fund to pay for funerals for some of the victims. Sponsors asked those interested in participating to call the airport.
The number is 714- or 213-SKY DIVE.
