Happened yesterday at my dropzone, Adventure Skydiving at Cedartown/Rockmart Airport. I don’t have many details yet, but what I do know is he went after a “cutaway” and got entangled in the mess.
One of the sweetest. most personable people you’d ever wanna meet.
One should never “go after” a cutaway. I am still relatively new to the sport, but that’s the prevailing opinion at dropzone.com, where I also post.
Bye Nate. Soar with the Angels, my brother of the skies!
Q
Oh, wow. Quasi, that’s a real shame. I liked the pictures of your dive…you looked alive!
I’m sorry 
I really want to skydive but it still seems to be one of the more dangerous sports.
My dad was in the FAA in the Antelope Valley. Edwards AFB is there. He met many of the notables in the flight test community. One time he picked Chuck Yeager up after he was forced down in his AC ultralight. And he knew the Barneses.
“Pancho” Barnes had one son, Bill. Dad leased his airplanes to Barnes Aviation. Bill Barnes died in the crash of a P-51 Mustang as I was riding my Yamaha to Fox Field to shoot some super-8 of it. The black plume of smoke filled me with dread; and I soon found out from dad what had happened. He was on duty that day.
I’d just spoken with Bill a few days before.
It’s funny, the things one thinks when something like this happens. The first response is “But I just talked to him!”, as if that makes the death untrue; a mistake.
I just hung a picture that I dug out of the storage unit yesterday. A plane in a tree, with the caption “Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.” Flying is very safe. Jumping out of an airplane is less so; but decades of skydiving – even dating back to early balloon flights, if I am not mistaken – has shown that the sport is not particularly dangerous. Unfortunately when something goes wrong, they tend to go very wrong. It just goes with the territory.
Nate died doing what he loved. How many of us will be able to do that? How many of us will gasp our last gurgling breaths through the choking liquids of pneumonia? How many of us will be eaten away by a ghastly disease? How many of us will die in a car wreck just making a mundane drive to work? Today I happened upon a cancer research fundraiser. There were hundreds and hundreds of little white hand-decorated bags with pictures and such mottos as “In memory of…” and “In celebration of…” on the outside, and some sand and a candle on the inside. I wasn’t prepared for it. When I saw all of those names, I had to look away.
It seems to me that if you have to go (and we all do, eventually), you may as well go doing something you love. Nate was lucky in this respect. His life was too short, true, and he will be sorely missed by his friends and loved ones; but he knew what he was getting into and he did it anyway. That’s how life should be lived. Nate deserves respect.
I hope this is coming across the way I intend it. I was just explaining to a female friend of mine that if a guy says something that can be taken the right way, or the wrong way, he always means it in the right way.
I’m sorry you lost your friend, Quasi. I didn’t know him, but do raise a glass to him for me.
…you have this great way of helping folks you don’t even know through some very tough times. I appreciate what you wrote and we will have a memorial for Nate Monday evening at the DZ where I will raise a glass in his memory for you and all the others who responded so kindly here.
Thanks
Q
For those of us who work, live, and play in the sky there are several rites of passage. Some of them are wonderful - your first flight, your first solo, your first skydive…
Others are terrible. One terrible rite of passage all aviators face is the death of our fellow skylovers. No, flying is not terribly, horribly dangerous thing on a daily basis - but when things go wrong they go very wrong, very fast. Even then, good training can often enable a safe landing, but the bitter truth is that sometimes someone dies.
If you are going to fly, you are going to go to funerals.
On the other hand, if you don’t fly you wind up going to funerals, too. And for many of us, flight (of any sort) is worth the risk. No, I don’t want to die flying - I’d much prefer to die of old age - but if I do at least I have dared to fly, and it will be while doing something I love (although I’m pretty sure I won’t love those final few seconds but hey, dying sucks any way you look at it). It would be no worse than dying in a really horrible car crash - a risk I take daily just to get to work, an action I view as a chore and not a joy.
Quasi, I’m sorry to hear of Nate’s death. After your first dive you were on a sort of “honeymoon”, still riding the high, and I’m sorry it was cut short this soon. I’m sorry a family will be burying a son/brother/husband. I’m sorry that his friends have been hurt. I’m sorry that Nate’s flying days are over, that he will never again know the joy of hanging in space above the Earth, seeing the ground laid out like a living map beneath him, never again see a five hundred-mile horizon or a see-forever clear sky, never again feel the wind so strong it’s almost like water rather than air, never again feel the sky not as “empty air” but a living thing that holds and cradles you as you pass through it… but I am very glad he DID get to experience that, and more than once, in this lifetime. I am glad he was able to bring joy and memories of joy through his camera to so many others such as yourself, who landed safely and happily and will treasure those moments all of their lives.
I knew Nate only through your words, Quasi, and I regret that is the only way I can ever know him. All of us who fly are members of a common club, and we have lost another member. But we *know * he has gone on to a better place, for those of us who dare to fly have already had a taste of heaven.
I hope the person who delivers Nate’s eulogy will speak as eloquently as you did in your post, broomstick. I know I certainly could not.
I spoke to our DZ this morning and it is now not certain if there will be a memorial for him here, since he is originally from Michigan, and they probably know him better at his home DZ.
My next dive isn’t sheduled until next Thursday, but it would sure be nice to join with those he considered his friends (and there were many - he was so well-liked here), and his fiancee is from here in Georgia as well, so I will keep in touch with them and hope we can at least say goodbye to him at the DZ.
Meanwhile there is a thread in the Bonfire section of dropzone.com in his memory (it is entitled simply Nate Gilbert),
and unfortunately, at some point his death will be listed in the fatality database there.
I was at work at my hospital last night when I learned of this, and worked in a daze all night. It is now almost 10 am Georgia time, and I am finding sleep difficult to attain. I have watched my video 5 times already this morning, and I am so grateful I got to spend a few minutes in the sky with him.
Thanks again for those wonderful words of comfort, y’all.
Blue Skies Always
Q
I don’t skydive. I don’t care for the idea. But whith that said, I understand what drove your friend to skydive. He felt really alive when he participated in an activivy that most poeple don’t consider safe. Much the same as I feel when I race cars.
I sure that if you could contact your friend now, he would tell you that he would rather lead a short full life (full of life) than to lead a long boring one where he sat around waiting for death to come knocking on his door.
I will raise a glass to your friend tonght
…and an “Ash-Dive” scheduled for next month.
I am sitting here in front of this machine, attempting to reconcile my feelings about this!
I see death (from one cause or another) on an almost daily basis in my hospital job, and I can usually “brush it off” (unless it’s a little one), but this has got me really “flamboozled” in that I cannot let it go!
Nate Gilbert was not my “hero”! He was someone I bonded with in the sky, however. He loved the sky, and he wasted no time in letting you know it!
Broomstick, John, and everyone else that was with me during this thread: Your words of comfort have been linked to on my hometown message board.
If there is any interest in Nate here on SDMB, you can find out about him by going to www.dropzone.com and clicking into the “Canopy/Swooping” section.
I love y’all!
Blue Skies!
Q