National Skydiving Museum visitors peruse the competition hall.

Parachuting has been around for nearly a millennium! That’s right. The first recorded use of a parachute goes back to the Chinese who jumped from high places with umbrella-like structures in the 12th century. And then came our most famous early skydiver, Leonardo da Vinci, who perhaps didn’t jump himself but who did design a parachute that was dropped from the Leaning Tower of Pisa in 1495.
    The first recorded jump from an aircraft in flight (a hot air balloon) occurred in 1797 over Paris, France. And once airplanes made their appearance in 1903, jumping out of them soon

followed. Barnstormers like Tiny Broadwick and Faye Lucille began thrilling crowds at air shows, circuses and county fairs. But we really didn’t have skydiving until we discovered that there was more to parachuting than a lifesaving canopy ride to the earth. Little more than a half century ago, a handful of pioneers like Lew Sanborn and Jacques Istel knew that jumping from airplanes was more than a survival skill—it was a realization of mankind’s fantasy of human flight. It could be and was a sport.
     While the sport of skydiving, as we know it today, has been around only since the mid-1950s, its growth has been phenomenal.

 

What a handful tried then, more than 320,000 people now enjoy each year—if only for a single jump to say they experienced the thrill. Today, more than four million Americans have made at least one jump.

But here is the sad news. The history of skydiving in the 20th century is slowly slipping away. In relative terms, we have more recorded history of what an Italian painter envisioned in the 15th century than what happened just 50 years ago. What we know about our modern roots is recorded mostly in the minds of our remaining pioneers and a few fading photographs and rotting parachutes in their attics. There is a parachuting library at the U.S. Parachute Association Headquarters, and the Parachute Industry Association has prudently warehoused some equipment representative of our sport, but these are at best stop-gap measures in a hope that, someday, someone will care enough to preserve the memories as they most certainly should be.

But it isn’t just about preserving our sport. It’s about our living and growing heritage, too.

While some sports have been around longer than skydiving, none has seen greater advancement in the ability of its performers and the technology of its equipment. We have seen a simple baton pass in 1958 by Steve Snyder and Charlie Hillard grow to a complex geometric formation of 400 skydivers.

Military surplus C-9 canopies and B-4 pack trays have been replaced by cross-braced, zero-porosity fabric airfoils and containers no larger than a two-page centerfold in Parachutist magazine. And the venerable DC-3 has long ago been replaced by high-performance turbine aircraft that carry skydivers to 14,000 feet faster than their predecessors could get to a third of that altitude.

So we have to act now, while the memories are fresh and the equipment still intact. We need to record, in a single repository, who won the 1962 World Meet in Orange, Massachusetts, and which team brought home the gold from the Adriatic Cup in 1972. We have to capture the lineage of canopies as we progressed from round to triangular to square and then elliptical. We need to gather the fading photographs taken at drop zones around the country, whether they be of Lyle Cameron on the telemeters at the 1971 Nationals or Jerry Bird leading his 10-man All Star team to a national championship the next year or just a really good photo of a student making that first jump out of a Cessna 182. And the present, such as Arizona Airspeed and the Golden Knights going head to head in 4-way and 8-way or newly forming freefly teams performing incredible three-dimensional formations, must be captured, too, because it will become our memorable past.

It was the dream of Bill Ottley, a pioneer in sport parachuting, to build a museum dedicated to capturing and preserving the history of skydiving. In 2005, when Bill Ottley went to the blue skies forever, he left a sizable bequest to make his dream a reality. We can no longer delay in fulfilling that dream.

The theatre stimulates the senses with exciting images from the past and present.

Thanks to Bill’s vision and generosity, and a donation of land from W. J. Vakos, the dream of a skydiving museum began to take shape. The perfect site was acquired along Interstate 95 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, adjacent to the U.S. Parachute Association headquarters. Initial designs for the building and conceptual work on the exhibits has begun and the history and fascination of one of mankind’s most exciting endeavors will be captured in a theater, library, and competition and training halls.

The 20,000 square foot museum will capture the history of skydiving while we still have the ability to do so. It will be designed by one of the preeminent museum architects in the country and it will make a statement about what skydivers do and how they do it.

When completed, the museum will be a state-of-the-art facility for veteran skydivers, single-jump students and everyone who ever asked the question "why would anyone ever want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?"

The exhibit on the history of equipment will display parachute gear from every skydiving era.

As visitors enter the facility, they will begin their tour in a theater that will stimulate the senses with exciting images of our past and present. They will then move on to the centerpiece exhibit which will tell our story chronologically in terms of people, events and equipment. There will be representative canopies, containers, helmets, jumpsuits and automatic activation devices from every era, along with photographs of pioneers—past and present—and milestone events, such as the women’s 151-way world record. Next will be an exhibit dedicated to competition, with a ram-air parachute suspended from above, with the competitor placing her heel in the very center of the target tuffet. Around the perimeter will be trophies, competition memorabilia and action photos of our very best.

For the veteran skydiver who wants to reminisce, a special second floor gallery will have racks of photos, computer terminals to access historical data and a Hall of Fame. And as with most museums, a dedicated space will feature rotating exhibits available to all.

For the non-skydiver, especially, there will be a training exhibit that will take prospective skydivers into a hangar with suspended harnesses, a canopy control simulator, aircraft mock-ups and packing mats—much like they would see at a drop zone. It will be very much hands-on and educational.

Our plans for the museum will also include traveling exhibits and educational outreach programs. Periodically, traveling exhibits will be made available to the public. This program ensures that the public will be given access to our history, even if they cannot visit the museum. The museum will work with educators in grades K-12 to develop a curriculum-based education program for use by area school children and youth groups.

But this dream can become a reality only if we have the support of skydivers, manufacturers, drop zone operators, friends of skydiving and the visiting public: 

• Through a very generous donation of more than $1 million from Vakos Development Company, we have acquired the perfect site for the museum at well below market value.
• The cost of the architecture, engineering and construction of the physical plant as well as the exhibits is $5 million. The building, itself, will be eye-catching but designed with thrift in mind. The exhibits will be designed to provide the quality experience that will draw visitors to the facility.
• And the museum is also planning at least a $1 million endowment to ensure that once the facility is built, it can be properly maintained.

The bottom-line objective to bring the vision to reality is $6 million. Your investment is an important step to capture and share with the public the history and fascination of one of mankind’s most exciting endeavors. Your support will ensure that, as skydiving continues to grow in popularity, the milestones of the past—and the story of how the sport came to be—are appreciated and remembered by a new generation of skydivers who have yet to take their first leap.

National Skydiving Museum visitors peruse the competition hall.

Parachuting has been around for nearly a millennium! That’s right. The first recorded use of a parachute goes back to the Chinese who jumped from high places with umbrella-like structures in the 12th century. And then came our most famous early skydiver, Leonardo da Vinci, who perhaps didn’t jump himself but who did design a parachute that was dropped from the Leaning Tower of Pisa in 1495.
    The first recorded jump from an aircraft in flight (a hot air balloon) occurred in 1797 over Paris, France. And once airplanes made their appearance in 1903, jumping out of them soon

followed. Barnstormers like Tiny Broadwick and Faye Lucille began thrilling crowds at air shows, circuses and county fairs. But we really didn’t have skydiving until we discovered that there was more to parachuting than a lifesaving canopy ride to the earth. Little more than a half century ago, a handful of pioneers like Lew Sanborn and Jacques Istel knew that jumping from airplanes was more than a survival skill—it was a realization of mankind’s fantasy of human flight. It could be and was a sport.
     While the sport of skydiving, as we know it today, has been around only since the mid-1950s, its growth has been phenomenal.

 

What a handful tried then, more than 320,000 people now enjoy each year—if only for a single jump to say they experienced the thrill. Today, more than four million Americans have made at least one jump.

But here is the sad news. The history of skydiving in the 20th century is slowly slipping away. In relative terms, we have more recorded history of what an Italian painter envisioned in the 15th century than what happened just 50 years ago. What we know about our modern roots is recorded mostly in the minds of our remaining pioneers and a few fading photographs and rotting parachutes in their attics. There is a parachuting library at the U.S. Parachute Association Headquarters, and the Parachute Industry Association has prudently warehoused some equipment representative of our sport, but these are at best stop-gap measures in a hope that, someday, someone will care enough to preserve the memories as they most certainly should be.

But it isn’t just about preserving our sport. It’s about our living and growing heritage, too.

While some sports have been around longer than skydiving, none has seen greater advancement in the ability of its performers and the technology of its equipment. We have seen a simple baton pass in 1958 by Steve Snyder and Charlie Hillard grow to a complex geometric formation of 400 skydivers.

Military surplus C-9 canopies and B-4 pack trays have been replaced by cross-braced, zero-porosity fabric airfoils and containers no larger than a two-page centerfold in Parachutist magazine. And the venerable DC-3 has long ago been replaced by high-performance turbine aircraft that carry skydivers to 14,000 feet faster than their predecessors could get to a third of that altitude.

So we have to act now, while the memories are fresh and the equipment still intact. We need to record, in a single repository, who won the 1962 World Meet in Orange, Massachusetts, and which team brought home the gold from the Adriatic Cup in 1972. We have to capture the lineage of canopies as we progressed from round to triangular to square and then elliptical. We need to gather the fading photographs taken at drop zones around the country, whether they be of Lyle Cameron on the telemeters at the 1971 Nationals or Jerry Bird leading his 10-man All Star team to a national championship the next year or just a really good photo of a student making that first jump out of a Cessna 182. And the present, such as Arizona Airspeed and the Golden Knights going head to head in 4-way and 8-way or newly forming freefly teams performing incredible three-dimensional formations, must be captured, too, because it will become our memorable past.

It was the dream of Bill Ottley, a pioneer in sport parachuting, to build a museum dedicated to capturing and preserving the history of skydiving. In 2005, when Bill Ottley went to the blue skies forever, he left a sizable bequest to make his dream a reality. We can no longer delay in fulfilling that dream.

The theatre stimulates the senses with exciting images from the past and present.

Thanks to Bill’s vision and generosity, and a donation of land from W. J. Vakos, the dream of a skydiving museum began to take shape. The perfect site was acquired along Interstate 95 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, adjacent to the U.S. Parachute Association headquarters. Initial designs for the building and conceptual work on the exhibits has begun and the history and fascination of one of mankind’s most exciting endeavors will be captured in a theater, library, and competition and training halls.

The 20,000 square foot museum will capture the history of skydiving while we still have the ability to do so. It will be designed by one of the preeminent museum architects in the country and it will make a statement about what skydivers do and how they do it.

When completed, the museum will be a state-of-the-art facility for veteran skydivers, single-jump students and everyone who ever asked the question "why would anyone ever want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?"

The exhibit on the history of equipment will display parachute gear from every skydiving era.

As visitors enter the facility, they will begin their tour in a theater that will stimulate the senses with exciting images of our past and present. They will then move on to the centerpiece exhibit which will tell our story chronologically in terms of people, events and equipment. There will be representative canopies, containers, helmets, jumpsuits and automatic activation devices from every era, along with photographs of pioneers—past and present—and milestone events, such as the women’s 151-way world record. Next will be an exhibit dedicated to competition, with a ram-air parachute suspended from above, with the competitor placing her heel in the very center of the target tuffet. Around the perimeter will be trophies, competition memorabilia and action photos of our very best.

For the veteran skydiver who wants to reminisce, a special second floor gallery will have racks of photos, computer terminals to access historical data and a Hall of Fame. And as with most museums, a dedicated space will feature rotating exhibits available to all.

For the non-skydiver, especially, there will be a training exhibit that will take prospective skydivers into a hangar with suspended harnesses, a canopy control simulator, aircraft mock-ups and packing mats—much like they would see at a drop zone. It will be very much hands-on and educational.

Our plans for the museum will also include traveling exhibits and educational outreach programs. Periodically, traveling exhibits will be made available to the public. This program ensures that the public will be given access to our history, even if they cannot visit the museum. The museum will work with educators in grades K-12 to develop a curriculum-based education program for use by area school children and youth groups.

But this dream can become a reality only if we have the support of skydivers, manufacturers, drop zone operators, friends of skydiving and the visiting public: 

• Through a very generous donation of more than $1 million from Vakos Development Company, we have acquired the perfect site for the museum at well below market value.
• The cost of the architecture, engineering and construction of the physical plant as well as the exhibits is $5 million. The building, itself, will be eye-catching but designed with thrift in mind. The exhibits will be designed to provide the quality experience that will draw visitors to the facility.
• And the museum is also planning at least a $1 million endowment to ensure that once the facility is built, it can be properly maintained.

The bottom-line objective to bring the vision to reality is $6 million. Your investment is an important step to capture and share with the public the history and fascination of one of mankind’s most exciting endeavors. Your support will ensure that, as skydiving continues to grow in popularity, the milestones of the past—and the story of how the sport came to be—are appreciated and remembered by a new generation of skydivers who have yet to take their first leap.