The third time around, free-fall seemed different than Dick Grout said he remembered it from past skydives.
“It seemed like we were falling pretty fast and turned around as opposed to the other jumps I had, where it was relatively quiet right away,” he said.
It made Grout’s plunge, strapped to a Skydive Grand Haven tandem instructor, more exciting — even if he did hope it slowed down, he said.
Grout was one of dozens on June 25 to skydive as he and other Rotary Club members took a leap against polio.
Well before Grout landed, the 101-year-old World War II veteran had already inspired and wowed other jumpers, watchers and Skydive Grand Haven crew members.
Among them was Don Hacker, a fellow Suttons Bay Rotary Club member who said he decided to make his first leap after hearing Grout’s story. Free fall ranked as the scariest part for him, but then time stood thrillingly still when the parachute opened.
“That actually is a good psychological feeling to have that parachute take hold,” he said.
Things were decidedly more calm in the audience, even as part of the crowd that gathered for the day’s 9 a.m. start took to their feet to cheer on the tiny dots in the sky. Those dots scattered behind the twin-engine plane thousands of feet in the air.
Before that, onlookers settled in to seats between the Grand Haven Memorial Airport’s main building and the skydiving business’ hangar.
That hangar was a whir of activity as tandem instructors and other employees repacked chutes and took other steps to get the next planeload ready.
Skydive Grand Haven owner Tony Gwinn gave Grout, of Traverse City, and other soon-to-be-jumpers their instructions with a bit of panache. He stood in the middle of a semicircle just outside the hangar, explaining how the hips and butt are the center of gravity, so divers should arch their backs and legs to get themselves belly-down during free fall.
He demonstrated the position and explained how it also gives the drogue — the smaller bit of fabric that slows and stabilizes both jumper and instructor, according to various skydiving references — room to open, Gwinn said.
“We need to be belly-to-earth and stable so that thing’s on top and comes off into clean air above us and there’s nothing to snag on,” he told the group.
Earlier, Gwinn said he was surprised to learn that polio is still a disease to eradicate when Rotary Club organizers approached him about the event. He said he was glad his company can help stamp out the largely forgotten disease while having fun doing so.
Hacker said he was born in 1954 — the year before Dr. Jonas Salk and team released the first effective polio vaccination. Hacker’s mother had polio, he said, so he wants Rotary International to be able to go where it’s needed to finally stamp out the disease.
Donations for the skydiving event go to Rotary International’s PolioPlus Fund, said Cathy Hegedus, chief administration officer for Rotary’s District 6290 covering Zeeland to Wawa, Ontario.
Suttons Bay Rotary Club was close to its $10,000 pledge for the event as of June 23, according to Mary Tonneberger, its membership manager.
That was just one club taking part in the jump.
That money in turn fuels the nonprofit’s contributions to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, according to Rotary International. Working with World Health Organization and others, the initiative funds health workers who immunize people in several countries.
What Rotary International started in the Philippines in 1979 the nonprofit took with the help of other organizations to places like Nigeria, where Boko Haram militants in the northeast make it hard to keep distributing the vaccine, according to Rotary International. The virus is endemic in two remaining countries, Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, where violence and political unrest pose a threat to health workers and the people they seek to inoculate.
Containing polio through vaccination, much less eradicating it, wasn’t even possible until Grout was in his mid-30s.
“It’s a disease that has not yet been licked, and that’s a part of the thing that we’re trying to do,” he said before the jump.
The vaccine arrived well after Grout came back home from the battlefields of Europe, having fought in D-Day among a group of Engineers. Several times before has he recounted the memories of taking cover from German defenders’ small arms fire, and that of a brave bulldozer driver who shuttled the explosives needed to demolish a wall blocking the landers’ advance.
Grout is one of an increasingly vanishing group of people who witnessed or took part in that day, and the months of fighting to follow.
Although Grout said he recalls the ordeal of a paratrooper whose chute got caught on a church steeple some time after D-Day, Grout’s own parachuting days were many years off.
Him being a skydiving veteran was merely a coincidence, he said — each time he jumped for a different Rotary fundraiser, and each time that was his main motivator, Grout said.
He recounted a much more familiar experience: finding all sorts of requests for money in the mail. There’s only so much money one can give out, he said.
Tonneberger said the Suttons Bay club’s oldest member is an inspiration and example of the club motto, “Service above self.” His age makes some club activities too difficult, but a tandem jump isn’t out of the question.
“So we have a strong leader there and if he can do it, a couple of other members stepped up to join, because it’s not something that everybody is so inclined to do, to jump out of a plane and parachute down,” she said.
Not everyone is inclined, but Grout wasn’t the only jumper to inspire others that day.
Katrina Riters sat next to Grout on the plane, and before that she said she was excited beyond words to get the chance. Skydiving was on the 29-year-old’s bucket list.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this, honestly I kind of feel like I’m dreaming a little bit,” she said. “That’s the thrill of being young, right? you get to live in the moment.”
Upon hearing she would be jumping with Grout — Skydive Grand Haven’s oldest by six years, Gwinn said — Riters said she loved to hear it.
“I think the older, the better,” Riters said.
Her motivation for jumping that day was to show that if someone like her can do it, then anyone can, no matter their age or size.
Riters said she uses a power chair, and has since 11, to move because her hips are out of place. That makes walking even short distances too difficult.
After the jump, she beamed with awe over the brief but beautiful experience, as she described it. The view of Lake Michigan, the cold breeze, the rush that felt more like sailing — it all went smoothly, further cementing her view that anyone can make the leap.
“Sometimes I deal with, ‘Oh my goodness, if I fall—’ ew, I don’t like that, that gives me anxiety,” she said. “But like I said, this plane ride was smooth, that’s all I can say. You’re talking up on the plane, and you’re just chatting, we’re just giving each other support and saying, ‘I wish everybody has a good time. If not, just close your eyes and wish for the best.'”
Riter lives in Grand Haven and came from Russia at age 2-and-a-half, she said.
She showed up that day after reading about the event on social media, Hegedus said. Another Rotarian set to jump caught an altogether different virus, COVID-19, and wanted very much to give her spot away. So Riter rounded out the jumpers at 50.
Times two, that is — Wendy Irving, a Noon Rotary Club member and Rotary Charities board member in Traverse City, agreed being linked to a trained professional helped keep the pre-leap jitters in check. So did watching the thrilled jumpers who went before her, she said — her face lit up after landing, too.
Now, Hegedus said Riter is set to speak at Grand Haven Rotary Club with her, and Hegedus is hoping the experience minted a new club member. It’s a bond that goes deep, and one that helped Hegedus when she was mourning the recent death of her son, she said.
For Grand Haven Rotary Club member Ron Streng, jumping is now a spectator sport. He said his 22-year Navy career starting in 1971 had him parachuting more than 2,000 times, each one without a tandem instructor. Being “banged up” to where skydiving is out of the question, he instead chipped in some money and came to watch.
“I can’t jump anymore because I’m old and feeble, but I just wanted to be down here because it’s part of my life,” he said.
As for Grout, he said he could have a fourth jump in him yet.
“Obviously depending on the circumstances and not just for the fun of it, but if it’s something for raising money, sure,” he said.
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