The Wonder Beyond

Article taken from http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050807/SPT/508070409/-1/CINCI
This accident happened at my home DZ but I felt was a moving article about what skydiving truly is, kudos to the reporter.

Skydivers gather to celebrate the life of Sean Crossman, and to affirm their appreciation for
BY PAUL DAUGHERTY | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER
The morning of July 2 broke beautiful, blue and cool. Geoff Sean Crossman, 37, threw open the hangar doors at Skydive Wayne County in Richmond, Ind., and said to the establishment's owner, Jaime Praeter, "What a beautiful day for skydiving."

They were all beautiful, was how he saw it. There were no bad days up there, 13,000 feet high, jumping out the big, wide door of a single-engine Porter, free-falling a mile in less than a minute, deploying the main canopy of the Set 400 tandem parachute, dubbed "Mellow Yellow" for the softness of its ride, then drifting, drifting, drifting, several minutes, just long enough to relax and admire all the goodness in the world.

Sean's friend and teacher, "Dad" Steve Stewart, put it like this: "Aqua skies, puffy clouds, the curvature of the earth. I just look at that and I wonder beyond."

Wonder beyond. Yes.

There are things beyond knowing. What is beauty and what is truth, and why are they different for each of us? What is dangerous, what is life-affirming, and where is the line between the two? Why did Sean Crossman, the safest skydiver anyone knew, the most enthusiastic jumper of them all, the one most full of life, have to die?

Here is what happened on the afternoon of July 2: Sean Crossman, an expert skydiver and licensed instructor, took a 21-year-old student named Casey Bischof up for a tandem jump. Sean's good friend Jason Yasuda would videotape the jump as a memento for Bischof. They leaped from the plane at 13,000 feet.

At 6,000 feet, Sean gave Jason the "wave-off," a thumbs-up signal that he would be opening the main canopy of the Set 400 tandem parachute. While filming, Jason steered himself away, above and to one side, to allow clearance for Sean's chute. Bischof was attached to Sean, dependent on the instructor's parachute.

Things went wrong. Mellow Yellow opened much too quickly and surged up and into Jason. Yasuda was still free-falling, at an estimated 110 mph; Sean was going about 70. They collided at 5,500 feet.

Minutes later, Sean Crossman lay in a cornfield, dead of multiple blunt-force injuries to the head and torso. His aorta torn, his neck broken, his body a husk, all that remained were his soul and his spirit. They floated like angels over the Indiana summertime.

This story won't be much about that, except to say Sean Crossman probably never knew what happened, and that he died in a fashion he'd have preferred. The only thing he wouldn't have liked was the negative publicity such an accident naturally provokes. He loved skydiving so much, that would have saddened him.

So we'll let this be about how he lived. About how they all live, really. Because, as anyone who has ever jumped from an airplane attached only to a harness and a bundle of cloth knows, skydiving is not about death. It is about life, most acutely realized.

"How many people can say they've fallen through a cloud? "

Sean's friend and fellow skydiver Michael Lee

It's the ultimate leap of faith. Sean had done it more than 2,000 times, ever since he showed up at a drop zone in Waynesville while an undergraduate at Wittenberg College. "If he missed a weekend, it's because there was snow," recalled Steve Stewart, who owned the drop zone.

Skydiving isn't something you do just once. It might begin as a crazy wish. Who hasn't said, "Before I die, I'd like to jump from an airplane?"

A quest becomes an addiction. Wish becomes need, and soon enough, you're jumping every weekend, with others of like spirit. It's an extreme sport, yet it's meant for those with the souls of poets. You might go for the adrenaline rush. You stay for everything else.

"After awhile, you get used to the thrill," Lee said, "and you marvel at things."

Lee, 34, owns a business in Mount Adams. He's a rock climber and a scuba diver. He drives a motorcycle he claims "can hit 150 in seven or eight seconds." Lee has swum with the sharks at the Newport Aquarium. He has made more than 100 skydives. Sean was one of his instructors.

Lee calls each jump "a reaffirmation of who you are in this world. At the point of deployment, when the parachute opens, you are choosing to live. You're saying, 'I'm coming back.' "

Sean never had any doubts about coming back. There is a narrow band of wisdom that buffers fear from recklessness. He never crossed it. The only time anyone can recall him being angry while skydiving was after he'd been bumped in the air by a free-falling jumper who he believed to be careless. "I'm never getting into an airplane again with that guy," Sean had said.

For his solo jumps, he used the Manta, the Volvo of parachutes. The canopy of a Manta is 288 square feet, twice as large as the newer, faster parachutes. "Big and docile," Steve Stewart called it.

Sean's love of the sport naturally progressed to teaching it to others. "He was all about instruction, passing on the joy," said his friend Randy Connell. "For Sean, there was nothing like the 'first-jump smile,' that head-splitting grin the students got when they landed."

He made close to 1,000 jumps with students. He took up a student who was wheelchair-bound. He took up an 84-year-old. Sean had a knack for giving them all a soft landing, by turning his body just before impact and wrapping his legs around them. Sean would rise from the landing bruised on one side, grass stain running the length of his blue jumpsuit.

(He always wore the blue suit when with students, not the newer red model, with the black stripes, which he saved for his solo jumps. Students occasionally would throw up on the blue model during jumps, an occurrence that amused Sean more than anything.)

"If my grandmother ever made a jump, I'd want Sean to be her tandem master," Randy Connell said. On the jump that killed Sean, his student, Casey Bischof, walked away needing just 20 stitches, to close a cut on his face.

"No one who knew him ever said a bad thing about him. What could they say?"

- Sean's friend Chris Fraley

He was 6 feet 1, 180 pounds, taut and sinewy, blond. He looked like a basketball player - "Orangutan Arms," friends called him - but at Wittenberg he played football. He was in the caving club. On one of his first dates with his future wife, Maureen, they went spelunking.

He lost the tips of his pinky and third finger of his right hand years ago, to a wood shop accident. He had knee surgery after sliding into a base during a softball game. For a few years, he was a member of a competitive skydiving team called Fear Nada. Fear nothing.

He called people "dude." He had a word, a catch-all descriptive, for the best things in life: zesty. To Sean Crossman, "zesty" wasn't just an adjective. It was the way his world should be.

"Sean never did anything halfway," said Fraley. "When he was single, his apartment looked like something out of Better Homes and Gardens. After he married Maureen and had kids, he was all about being a dad and husband."

Sean had cut back his skydiving in recent years. Maureen wasn't thrilled about his hobby. Neither were his parents. He had two kids, 2-year-old Rachel, and Thomas, his 8-month-old son. Real life and skydiving don't mix well. Sean spent more time at home. He planted 50 oak trees in the yard of his Lebanon home. Neighbors often saw him pushing Rachel's stroller. He jumped two Saturdays a month.

That didn't lessen his zest for the sport. Three times, Chris Fraley had broken her back skydiving. That was due more to the brittleness of her bones than the rigors of the sport. Regardless, Sean was there each time, encouraging her to keep jumping. They jumped every year at Vandalia's July 4 celebration. The ritual for Sean was always the same: "Did you pack a chute for a soft, slow opening?" he'd ask Chris.

Then: "Welcome back" when they landed.

At SkyDive Wayne County, they paid Sean by the jump. Yet he never missed a staff meeting, even in the winter. Often, when owner Jaime Praeter arrived for work, Sean was already there, having made the 75-minute drive from Lebanon, waiting for Jaime to open up. Praeter's lasting image of Sean is of "him standing in front of the manifest counter, slapping his hands down and saying, 'What have you got for me today?'

"The day he died, he asked me, 'Boss, can I go out and get some food?' I laughed and said, 'Sean, I'm not your boss,' " Praeter recalled.

That same morning, Greg Bailey had run into Sean. Bailey is the safety and training adviser at Richmond Municipal Airport, where the drop zone is. As such, Bailey is the liaison between the drop zone, the skydivers and the U.S. Parachute Association. His job that day would be to conduct the investigation into Sean's death.

Bailey hadn't had a good morning. He mentioned it to Sean Crossman, who was incredulous. He wrapped Bailey in a bear hug. "You should be smiling," Sean said. "It's a beautiful day and we're skydiving."

Thirty-year-old Jason Yasuda is recovering physically. He was free-falling at 110 mph when he collided with Sean, collapsing the canopy and killing Sean. Jason suffered a shattered pelvis and five fractures in his back. Those wounds will heal, leaving scars.

He remembers everything. You wonder if he wishes he didn't: the smooth jump, the normal free fall, the gleeful looks on the faces of Sean and Casey Bischof. The wave-off, Sean's chute deploying ...

Why did it happen? How was it that the tandem chute that is supposed to take 10 to 15 seconds to open fully instead billowed in 1.7 seconds? Why did it surge forward, erratically, up and under Jason?

Why, when the tandem canopy is 400 square feet, and the people beneath it occupy just nine square feet, did Jason and Sean Crossman have to collide so completely? Said Randy Connell: "If Jason had been a foot back or to the front or to either side, it would have been ugly, but everyone would have survived. The window of collision was so small."

Jason lives in a wheelchair now. His life is a series of compromises. Unlike the limitlessness of skydiving, Jason Yasuda's world now is framed by all he can't do. And all he wishes he could take back. The video he shot preserved the horror.

"People that have seen the video can tell you it's not your fault, there's nothing you could have done," Jason said. "But you still ask yourself, 'What if I didn't go on that jump?' "

Nobody blames him. The video exonerates him. The local investigation is complete. Jason did nothing wrong. Yet the time he spent in the hospital was filled with flashbacks. He didn't want to close his eyes, because when he did, the movie played again and again. He had occupational, physical and psychological therapy.

He moved from his second-floor apartment in Hyde Park, because it didn't have an elevator, to a skydiving friend's ranch-style house in New Lebanon, west of Dayton. The friend ripped the sink from his guest bathroom, to allow Jason access in his wheelchair.

He expects to be in the wheelchair until early October. He hopes to walk then, first between parallel bars, then with the aid of a walker. Yasuda says there is "no time frame for walking normally."

He was teaching skydiving at the Richmond Municipal Airport. He can tell you exactly how many jumps he has made since he started in August 1999: 1,679. He'd made 600 jumps with his small, fast VX chute. He says he "can't wait" to get back in the air.

Here's the irony: Jason Yasuda didn't want to skydive. He was afraid of roller coasters as a kid. His younger brother begged him to try it, Jason said OK, then chickened out the night before the jump. Finally, he said, "If I go once, will you shut up?"

Jason Yasuda once skydived from the front seat of a biplane. The wings were above him, as was a set of handlebars. Jason grabbed the handlebars as the pilot flipped the plane. He hung upside down for a few seconds, then let go. It was the best jump he has ever made.

He thinks about that now, in the wheelchair, the horror of July 2 still vivid. But maybe not so much anymore.

"Jason hits the canopy and there's a blur. The next thing you see is the horizon. And a gentle spin."

- Randy Connell, after viewing Jason Yasuda's videotape

The collision knocked off Sean Crossman's helmet and they never found it. It's in the cornfield somewhere, about a quarter-mile east of Stateline Road. Everyone guesses it'll turn up in the fall, when the fields are mowed.

Greg Bailey, Scott Saluga and Roger Humphrey watched as Sean Crossman's parachute fluttered off course. Steve Stewart, 55, veteran of 6,000 jumps, wasn't overly concerned. The chute was open, the tandem riders were floating, everything looked OK. "I thought somebody busted a control line," Stewart recalled thinking.

But when a skydiver is a couple miles from the landing area, it is cause to wonder. Bailey, Humphrey and Saluga jumped into Humphrey's van. By then, Sean Crossman was dead and Jason Yasuda's back and pelvis were broken. "I just laid limp in the harness and tried to figure out what was going on," Yasuda says now.

"I grab my toggles and look for the drop zone. It's behind me. I'm not gonna make it. I'm surrounded by beanfields and cornfields. Then I see a house, a small patch of grass. I aim there. I set it down soft, on my stomach."

Randy Connell, himself a safety adviser, watched the video. "Just prior to impact, you see Jason's shadow. He has his arm and leg dug down really hard, trying to get out and away from (Sean's) main" canopy. "But between the lack of reaction time and the canopy stealing Jason's air ..."

Jason landed in a yard on Druley Road, west of Stateline, a mile from Sean. In his confused state - "I was kind of flopping through the sky," he says now - he'd had the presence of mind to deploy his chute at 4,000 feet. The men in Humphrey's van spotted an ambulance, then heard a call on the police radio: "There's another skydiver down in the cornfield."

They sped in that direction. The ambulance beat them there. They got out, ran into the field. Scott Saluga was the first to reach Sean. Greg Bailey was next. "Roger, he's gone," Bailey said to Humphrey. "He broke his neck."

Jason Yasuda thought he was paralyzed from the waist down. People from the house had seen him fall and not move. They'd already called 911 before they came running to his aid. "Do you need help?" they asked. "Can you move your fingers? Can you move your toes?"

Between 1999 and 2004, 173 people died skydiving. Twenty-two of those deaths were collision-related, according to the United States Parachute Association. It's a very low number, given that skydivers make an estimated 2.5 million to 3 million jumps a year. As a group, they are safety-conscious. But also aware of the risks.

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather its complement," was how Randy Connell put it. Steve Stewart said it a different way:"As safe as we've made the sport, we're still jumping out of an airplane, dammit."

"Please let this be a celebration of Sean's life."

- Jason Yasuda

On Saturday at Richmond Municipal Airport, eight of Sean Crossman's friends jumped from 14,000 feet through a moody sky, to celebrate his life. Holding hands, they formed "a round" in the air. At 6,000 feet, about the height of the collision that killed Sean, Maggie Downs "tracked away" from the group, releasing her grip to free-fall. It was a nod to Sean.

Jason Yasuda sat in his wheelchair, in the grass between two runways, tracking the skydivers as they floated like butterflies to earth. A crowd of 40 or so friends had gathered. Occasionally, one would offer Jason a hug. His tears fell into his fists.

In the plane, the eight said a prayer for Sean's family before they jumped. They thanked God for having known him. After they broke the round, Chris Fraley did a barrel roll, something Sean always enjoyed watching her do when the two jumped together. Fraley landed in a patch of pea gravel in the grass. The gravel is a landing area for accuracy jumpers. Sean enjoyed accuracy jumping.

Scott Saluga landed at Jason Yasuda's feet, just where he intended. Maggie Downs, the last to land, popped up quickly, smiled immediately, then broke down as she hugged Yasuda. He is her boyfriend. When one skydiver dies, they all bleed.

The mystical and melancholy triumph of flying without their wingman lingered. "Until you've flown across the sky and touched your friends ..." Fraley said. "You can't know what this means."

They mourn his death, but no more than they celebrate his life. They know the risks; they're sensitive about what is said about them and their sport every time someone dies doing it.

But this is what their hearts know: Sometimes living fully means dying a little. If you don't know pain, how can you possibly understand joy? Every passion comes with a price.

They are the best of friends. Ultimately, this is what matters to them most. After the jumps, there are the stories. The "beer light" comes on and the fellowship begins. This odd, unique kinship among those who would fly without wings commences anew.

When Jason Yasuda was in the hospital, nearly 100 skydivers came to his bedside. "Every time I woke up, one was there," he said. Maureen Crossman was amazed by the number that attended her husband's visitation. She asked friends to gather a list of their names.

The skydivers who knew Sean Crossman know two things for sure: He was one of their best and they will jump again soon, if only to honor his memory.

Randy Connell: "How many people have you heard say skydivers must have a death wish? They are so wrong. If we had a death wish, we'd only make one jump, without a parachute.

"Skydivers have a life wish. There is no other activity as life-affirming. When you leave the airplane, you're dead unless you do something about it. Every deployment is a vote for the beauty of life."

Deploy, then, and blue skies. The wonder beyond beckons.