A skydiving instructor who had made over 6,800 jumps. A drummer who was meticulous about safety since falling in love with the sport that helped him sober up. A software engineer on the cusp of becoming a certified skydiving coach. A grandfather honoring his sister lost to cancer.
Family and friends of the 11 jumpers and pilot killed when their plane crashed shortly after taking off in Missouri said they loved their hobby – whether it was to find personal peace or to share a once-in-a-lifetime experience with others. They remembered the experienced skydivers as people who may have had regular jobs to pay their bills but free falling brought both the thrill and the serenity they craved.
Blake Thacker, 25, jumped for seven years since first skydiving on his 18th birthday. He was set to get his skydiving coach certification over the weekend, his mother Sherry said.
“Skydiving had given him the confidence to do other things in his life, to be successful and reach for things maybe he thought he wasn’t good enough to do,” she said.
The plane was barely off the ground Sunday – only about 100 feet in the air – when it made an abrupt left turn before crashing on a sunny day. It appeared to be losing power, witnesses said.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating all factors leading to the crash including how much experience the pilot had with this model of plane and any mechanical or structural problems with the aircraft.
The 12 people killed were identified as Thacker, Kurt John Roy, Michael Shanahan, David Hershberger, Sai Karthik Varma Datla, Matthew Swope, Dustin McKinney, Jen Sharp, Marcus Miller, Nicholas Nash, William Fischer and Dane Cordes, according to the Bates County Coroner’s Office.
McKinney’s wife said her husband was meticulous about safety when he jumped after his love for skydiving prompted him to get sober seven years ago.
“It feels like this is the only way that skydiving could have taken out Dustin, because it was such a freak accident,” Kathryn Nold said
from him that he gave so effortlessly to everyone,” Nold said of her high school sweetheart.
Shanahan took up skydiving just before his older sister Nikki died from breast cancer in 2016, his mother said Tuesday.
“He wanted to live his life and make it worth having fun, having a good time, doing something he enjoyed, and skydiving was something he had always wanted to do, unbeknownst to us,” Gloria Shanahan told The Associated Press.
Shanahan honored his sister by skydiving on her birthday, Mother’s Day and the anniversary of her death. He then visited her grave.
Sharp, 55, took her first jump in 1989 when she was 18. Some 6,800 jumps later, she was a legendary instructor at the highest levels of the sport and the coach for Thacker’s certification.
On her blog, Sharp wrote about how she jumped into Denver’s Coors Field ballpark while dressed as the queen of England and loved to go tandem with people skydiving for the first time and to see them test their resolve, grow personally and just feel alive.
Swope, 39, worked in IT, but every weekend he was up in the sky as he searched for any bit of fun, especially something he could share with others, his best friend, Justin Williams, said.
