S/cy's the limit for daring Webfoot chutists
Students jump
at rare chance
to learn sport
By LARRY JAFFE
Of the Emerald
The staccato throb of the single
engine Cessna aircraft high above
Daniels Field suddenly ceases.
Four silhouettes emerge and
plummet rapidly toward the earth
some 7,500 feet below. Thirty
seconds and 5,000 feet later, their
flight is arrested by the blossom
ing of their multi-colored
canopies.
For the next two minutes, they
drift toward the ground, sus
pended splashes of color against
an azure background. Landing
lightly, they gather their deflated
gear and amble off toward the
hangar. Jim Wright and three
other Webfoot Sport Parachutists
have successfully completed
another parachute jump.
Wright, 42, is the stocky, good
natured manager of Daniels Field
Jump Center, 14 miles north of
Eugene on Interstate 5. He owns
two Cessna airplanes and enough
parachute equipment to outfit a
small airborne division. When he
isn’t supervising teachers for the
Eugene school district, he’s jump
ing, teaching people to jump or
flying a plane for others to jump
out of.
Wright wears a constant smile
on his boyish countenance and
punctuates his speech with such
rustic expressions as “heck” and
“doggone it.” Though he has log
ged nearly 3,000 jumps over 25
*
— .. ■*' -
* *
Photo by Lora Cuykendall
Handling a parachute is just as tricky on the ground as it is in the air. Student parachutists practice their techniques in Hayward field.
years, he freely admits he’s afraid
of heights.
“I really don’t like heights," he
said. “Standing in a building four
or five stories up I get nervous if I
look down. But in an airplane I
don’t even think about it because
of the security of the parachute.”
Wright began jumping in 1952
as an undergraduate at what was
then Southern Oregon College in
Ashland. In order to work his way
through school, he spent four
summers as a smoke-jumper for
the U.S. Forest Service.
In 1956, he was drafted and
served two years with the 82nd
Airborne Division in Fort Bragg,
N.C. After his discharge he re
turned to Oregon and, with two
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Page 14
other jumpers, formed the
Emerald Skydivers, forerunners
of the Webfoots.
The first club jump was delayed
nearly two years because of a
Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) ruling.
“Pilots in those days were a little
hesitant to let you jump out of their
aircraft because of the FAA regu
lation,” Wright explained. “They
considered jumpers to be falling
objects and held the pilots liable
for them.
But pilots were found and the
club started jumping regularly. In
1965, the club offered a first jump
course for college credit through
the University. Recalling this first
University course, the sandy
haired father of three said, “We
had four or five people from the
University who wanted to make
their first jump. We put an ad in the
Emerald, showed afilm and got 35
or 40 more students who wanted
to jump.”
Since then, Wright estimates
3,000 University students have
taken the course. Unlike many
commercial drop-zones that offer
the opportunity to make the first
parachute jump the same day
training begins, students in the
University course must run
through at least four weekly
three-hour sessions before mak
ing their first jump.
Three other experienced jum
pers assist Wright in putting the
students through “ground
school.” They teach aircraft exits
and parachute landing falls, pack
ing procedures, canopy control
and emergency procedures for
rare occasions when the main
canopy malfunctions.
According to Wright, this exten
sive rather than intensive training
accounts for the low number of
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injuries in his classes. “We've had
three or four fractures and one
compressed disc,” he says. “We
probably have the safest injury re
cord of any jump group in the Un
ited States.”
Wright’s eyes twinkle as he
points out the shortcomings of
female jumpers he’s trained.
"Guys are so much easier.
They’re more coordinated and not
so fearful of heights. You don’t
have to lift them up and push them
out of the airplane. We’ve only had
two people land in power lines and
both of them were girls. And the
lines were almost a mile away
from the target. Fortunately,
neither one was hurt.”
Running the jump center has
been a financial pendulum for
Wright. He intended the center to
be a non-profit venture, but occa
sionally, he has been forced to dip
into his own pocket for operating
expenses. Nevertheless, he has
reached one of his lifetime ambi
tions. “My big goal is to get free
jumps and that’s what I do. I don’t
charge myself for the jump.”
A resourceful jumper, Wright
once managed to procure a free
week in Mexico for himself, his
wife and a pilot. He convinced
several ocean-front hotels to pro
vide the group with room and
board in exchange for some free
public relations.
Once a day he was supposed to
parachute into the hotel swimming
pool. All went well until on one
jump his parachute failed to fully
inflate.
“I didn’t even try to land in the
pool,” he grinned ruefully. "I hit
hard as hell.”
After 25 years in the sport,
Wright still gets a thrill out of
parachuting.
“I just forget about work and the
daily problems you’re accus
tomed to thinking about when you
come home from work. When
you’re out there, you’re in a com
pletely different world. Heck, I’m
ready to tackle Monday again
after a weekend of jumping.”
CHINATOWN I
Polanski, Dunaway,
Nicholson
Sat, Sun, 150 Geo.
_ 7 and 9:30_
Wednesday, March 30, 1977