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Wednesday, August 3, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
This jump’s
for you, Chief
“… I can remember every-
thing: From horses and cart
days right up until today; jet
planes and computers. When
I was a boy there weren’t
even any fences … all just
open prairie. The world has
changed so quickly … It’s
so short a time … I’ve had
a long life, but it seems like
yesterday…”
— Chief David William
Wounded in Winter Beautiful
Bald Eagle
The world lost a great man
last week.
Chief David Beautiful
Bald Eagle died on July 22.
He was born in a tipi on the
edge of the Cheyenne River
on April 8, 1919, and he was
the grandson of Chief White
Bull, who some 43 years
earlier had led a memorable
charge against Custer at the
Little Bighorn.
In 1936, Beautiful Bald
Eagle joined the 4th Cavalry,
and in 1940 re-enlisted with
the 82nd Airborne at Fort
Bragg. He was decorated for
bravery after his first com-
bat jump at Anzio, and was
severely wounded and left
for dead on his second, at
Normandy, on D-Day.
After the war, he played
semi-pro baseball. He acted
in movies and served as
Errol Flynn’s stunt double
in “Flaming Arrow.” He
became a champion ballroom
dancer and is enshrined in
the Ballroom Hall of Fame.
He raised horses. He raised
children. A lot of them, 25,
in fact, including five that
he and his wife — an actress
from Belgium named Josee,
whom he met at the World’s
Fair in 1958 — adopted. He
raced cars. He went back
to rodeo, forking bareback
broncs and bulls. He was a
close friend of rodeo leg-
end Casey Tibbs, and once
danced with Marilyn Monroe.
He acted in more mov-
ies, including “Dances With
Wolves,” and starred in his
final film at the age of 95. He
was made traditional Chief of
the Miniconjou Lakota band
and the United Native Nations
Goodwill Ambassador for the
Cheyenne River Sioux, and
he went skydiving.
Skydiving.
I’ve seen a lot of that
lately, while working the
horses or out watering the
garden, I look up and see
the brightly patterned cano-
pies swinging back to earth,
and on some days I can even
hear the delighted shrieks
and shouts of people living
their lives with a dramatically
renewed sense of awe.
Surely you know what
comes next.
What better way to honor
a life of service and dedica-
tion to family, friends, neigh-
bors; a life so well lived, so
perfectly bookended by tipis
and supercomputers, that it
almost defies articulation?
Why wouldn’t we, after con-
sidering one man’s model,
take a minute to examine the
mundane routines that we fall
into so easily, to throw them
out with Monday’s garbage,
and to purposefully aim for a
place completely beyond our
comfort zone?
We did, my wife and I.
We drove down to the
airport and signed up. We
entrusted our lives to a pair of
complete strangers, Ryan and
Steven, strapping into the har-
ness, and donning the surpris-
ingly simple garb of human
flight. And it was not lost on
me, as we flew over the drop
zone and Ryan cinched up
our tandem rig, that Beautiful
Bald Eagle believed that the
harness he wore on D-Day
had saved his life, as he and
his brothers from the 82nd
were shot, in his own words,
“like clay pigeons” descend-
ing over Normandy.
The harness was so tight,
he said, that it prevented
him from bleeding out from
his wounds when he hit the
ground.
I won’t tell you I wasn’t
scared. I was. Ryan, my
instructor, told me just before
the door opened and we tum-
bled out — which in that first
few seconds is like falling
in a vacuum of pure shriek-
ing insanity — that he could
feel my heart beating above
the vibration of the plane. He
wasn’t kidding.
But then, just as suddenly,
photo by pete rathbun
In the spirit of Chief david Beautiful Bald Eagle...
we were flying, buoyant
even, as if the air were push-
ing us back into the sky, and
we were carving our descent
in a series of controlled and
rewarding turns. Fear van-
ished. It was true flight, loud,
windy, with all of Central
Oregon spread out beneath us
in a vision of mountain lakes
and forests and volcanoes
holding snow in the lees. We
could see St. Helens, Rainier,
the raw power of the Cascade
peaks marching off into the
horizon, and far below, the
little town of Sisters, look-
ing something like a cartoon
hamlet just recently hacked
out of the forest.
And then the parachute
opened and we began to float,
the world gone so suddenly
quiet it seemed we were drift-
ing in the primordial. And
there is nothing like hang-
ing lazily under the canopy,
taking in the curvature of a
world you might never quite
see again in the same way,
and looking up to see your
wife, still streaking earthward
at 150 mph, in a pink flight-
suit, freefalling.
We could do worse than to
model something of our drive
for life after David Beautiful
Bald Eagle, who just kept
living well when age and
gravity and time might have
forced him to close up shop.
But he didn’t allow that, and
instead seemed to grow big-
ger and stronger with age.
We should do so well. His
example inspired us, and we
were happy to shove compla-
cency aside, widen the path,
and just get after the good
and sweet business of being
alive.
So … this jumps for you,
Chief Beautiful Bald Eagle
— “walk on.”
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