Advancing age doesn't slow down skydivers

MOUNT VERNON, Mo. -- Tell Elmer Lewis to go take a flying leap, and he'll gladly oblige -- as long as it's from an airplane.

Despite an approaching storm, Lewis made his sixth parachute jump Friday -- at the age of 90 -- and couldn't wait to take another leap of faith.

"I'm scared to death of heights, literally petrified, but this didn't scare me a bit," said Lewis, after plummeting 10,500 feet strapped to skydive instructor Jim Phillips. "We did a loop and a couple of spins."

Lewis wasn't alone. Jumping with him, also with tandem instructors, were friends Skippy Fine, 82, who has been jumping since 1975, and first-time jumper Rex Crewse, 71.

"We're gonna find out how wide that yellow streak in me is," quipped Crewse, a pilot from Springfield. "I remember banking airplanes and enjoying the sheer ecstasy of three-dimensional flight. I think this will be the same."

Heavy clouds delayed the trio's jump until late in the afternoon.

They emerged from the twin-engine jump plane as tiny black specks in the sky and plummeted at 120 mph for about 20 seconds.

With a "pop, pop, pop" audible from the ground, their three flying wing parachutes opened at about 5,000 feet for a long, smooth ride to earth.

All three landed safely in the soft grass. All three, including Crewse, were ready to go again.

"I survived," shouted Crewse as Lewis arrived to shake his hand. "Oh man that was fantastic."

Fine said she hoped others would see that old age doesn't mean an end to thrilling challenges.

"I've always been interested in flying and skydiving, but I never had an opportunity to do it," she said. "When I got to age 75 I decided I'd better do it before it's too late."

She'll never forget her first step out of the airplane, free-falling into the vastness of the sky.

"It was like being a bird," she said. "You put your arms out and your legs out and it feels just like you're flying."

Lewis made his first tandem skydive after his son Duane wanted to give him "something unusual" for Father's Day five years ago. Duane jumped alongside his dad, despite harboring concerns.

The skydivers made their jumps at Freefall Express, a skydiving business based at the Mount Vernon Airport.

Phillips, who has more than 1,600 tandem jumps under his belt, said his passengers' biggest fear isn't about crashing -- it's wetting their pants.

"That's never happened, but I have had a couple people throw up," he said, adding, "I never know how they'll react. I've had tiny women who seem like they know what they're doing, and great big guys who cry like babies."