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y c. -? i ‘ . . we! , * an * * 7 ft els oe 7 , . . - we 8 oe achatah ni Biedanin Zann thie at shiw Renegade me He yet Phe e @.: SMOKE JUMPER . . “I first started jumping as a ° (NEAR ACCIDENT : . smoke jumper in Montana,” said| ‘2 just barely missed some pow- “|| Peterson. “It was in the early 50s}¢t lines,” Peterson said, “but my . when I was a student at the Uni-| Chute didn’t, There I was suspend- versity of Missouri, At the time 1] 4 ftom the lines. This taught me was quite interested in being a| the dangers of unsupervised jump- | writer and I was looking for new | ™&:- , . . i experience—broadening my base} What’s the difference between week TE . of knowledge, skydiving and regular. parachut- “ ey “sha : “Y read an article about smoke- Peeachatiat Tees when a regular "Or tye }| Jumping in a magazine and sent in i my application. Two years later I was accepted. We were employed by the U.S. Forest Service to con- tain fires in isolated areas in Mon- tana. “My first jump was quite an ex- perience,” Peterson recalls. “At 2,500 feet I knew I was going to jump. I wanted to, yet I didn’t, ‘Then my instructor gave me a heavy pat and out I went... my eyes were closed. In fact, my eyes {were closed during the first five jumps.” to. : Peterson did his first free fall in 1953. He wished he hadn’t. He jumped out and tumbled head over heels “for quite a distance.” Peter- son then pulled the ripcord and nothing happened. Finally, in des- peration, the smokejumper-turned- skydiver, “threw” the ripcord. The parachute blossomed, but Peter- son didn’t know how to guide it. opened automatically by a static line connected to an airplane. When a skydiver jumps, he re- leases the parachute himself, there- by allowing him time to “sail” through the atmosphere. Peterson didn’t skydive again until last February. As a news- paper reporter, he did the jump to get a story for: the Tri-City Herald. (He’s now a technical edi- tor in Org. 2-5000.) When Peter. son came to work for Boeing last May he helped organize the Boe- ing Employees Skydiving Club. Now he jumps almost every Sun- day. (The club has a 60-acre pas- ture near Kent.) . Peterson maintains there’s a lot of interest in skydiving. He said he received more than 100 tele- phone calls about the club when a skydiving article appeared in The Boeing News. Sheridan has 13 sky dives to his credit, @ TESTS REQUIRED | When one wants to be a sky- diver, one has to go through super- vised testing period. First there’s short delays—then the delays (from airplane to release of para- chute) get longer. Then there are licensing phases. And, a]l club jumps are supervised by a safety officer. Then—if the main ‘para- chute fails, skydivers always have an auxiliary one. Consequently skydiving is quite safe, maintains {Sheridan Peterson. . So, all you seekers of “free- dom,” “new experience,” “adven- ture,” “release”—just call Sheri- dan Peterson at Ext. 5-2234 and sign up for the club. The minimum age is 18; the maximum age is a little vague—around retirement jage, Peterson comments, There’s only one minor draw- back, If you’re married, keep an :, Jeye on your wife, “Wives,” says '. Peterson, “are considered by many “4 to be the greatest obstacle to sky- ae jdiving. There seems to be one way jout of this problem — get more ‘ women interested in the sport.” . a + ~ ie wis ween tae ca mt as « fe ow ot wage x . Fe ° . s a ; 4 ‘- } : < Seana in dainidiand metmensinntenainn anh enna aan ae i . : us a