A little fear wasn’t enough to stop James Gordon from doing something he’d never done before. Now he has his sights set on another jump at 100
At 97, James Gordon wanted to see the world differently and Schlegel Villages was prepared to make it possible. To do it, he climbed into a small airplane, rose more than 10,000 feet above the ground and prepared to leave through an open door.
It was his first skydive. Some people questioned his decision.
“Oh no, you don’t want to do that,” they told him. “I wouldn’t try it.”
James listened, but his mind was made up. He did not want anyone to think he lacked the courage. More importantly, he wanted to prove to himself that he could do it.
“Other people do it, and it’s an experience that is pretty unique and something that is surely uplifting in many ways,” he told me.
He was excited, although not entirely without apprehension. The night before the jump, James admitted he was “a bit fearful.” His wife was understandably concerned too, but when the experience was safely behind him, his joy became something they could share.
A Grim Determination
By morning, his apprehension had given way to what he described as “a grim determination and a strange contentment” with doing something unusual. When James arrived at the dropzone Skydive Swoop, he sat calmly talking with the people around him while the airplane was refuelling nearby. Very little of their conversation concerned the jump.
Then it was time to board. The airplane was so small that James could not sit upright near the door without his head touching the roof. A harness was secured tightly across his shoulders and around his body. Behind him was his tandem instructor, Alex Torre, who would guide him through every stage of the jump.
James had expected his fears to intensify once he was on the airplane. Instead, they disappeared.
“I didn’t feel a thing,” he recalled. “I was as happy as can be. Strange.”
When the door opened, he saw the tail of the airplane nearby. He moved his legs into position and prepared to leave with Alex. Then they were gone.
The world above you
James and his tandem instructor exited the plane, and briefly they were upside down, face to the sky.
“It looked as if the world had suddenly become a world above you,” he said.
He recalls a feeling that he was just floating, with the earth moving around him. The parachute was deployed and James enjoyed the gentle canopy ride, with turns that felt fun for him. The deployment from freefall to sitting under the canopy is a feeling he believes he will never forget.
James and his tandem instructor landing, albeit with a few insignificant cuts from the landing. Back on the ground, he sat with the people who had helped him and talked about what he had seen. Alex, his tandem instructor, has taken many people skydiving, but James’s age was not the only thing that stayed with him.
“What I found most remarkable was his recall after the skydive,” Alex said. “His words were so eloquent when he was describing his experience, and the fact that I could show a 97-year-old the world in a way which he had never seen before truly inspired me.”
James explained that looking down from a mountain or another high place could never reproduce what he saw or felt during the jump.
James Inspires His Long Term Care Home
Back at The Village of Riverside Glen Long Term Care where he lives, residents and caregivers congratulated him and asked how he could possibly have done it. They regarded his accomplishment as extraordinary. James said, “It was really out of this world.”
When I asked whether someone else his age should skydive, James offered “Some people like to take a bit of a risk and see things in a different way.”
For James, the jump wasn’t about proving a point. It was about making his own decision, accepting the risk and discovering what remained possible.
Ready For More
Would he do it again?
“Yes,” he told me, “If there was a particular reason for it.”
He already has one in mind.
“I want to do it on my 100th birthday.”
