Father-daughter jumpers: John and Maureen Miller
Maureen Miller takes her first fall from the sky.
Father-daughter jumpers: John and Maureen Miller
It's tough to convince Beth Miller that her hobby is statistically more dangerous than that of her husband John and daughter, Maureen.
Beth is an avid horseback rider, while John and Maureen have a serious affection for sky diving.
"They keep pointing out how dangerous my sport is," Beth says with a laugh. "It's of no comfort to me."
Over the years, John expressed an interest in giving sky diving a try. So for his 40th birthday, the family chipped in and bought him his first lesson.
John, now 44, has jumped out of a perfectly serviceable airplane more than 700 times.
Maureen watched her father since his earliest jumps. And like John, she craved the rush of earth and gravity's grasp.
So on March 28, a few weeks after her 18th birthday, Maureen made her first 3,000-foot jump, under the tutelage of Maytown Sport Parachute Club's newest instructor — John.
"My father gave me my first lesson," says Maureen, a Manheim Township High School student. "I thought I would be nervous, but just before you leave the plane, all you can think about is doing everything right."
Indeed.
Doing everything right begins with many hours of classroom training, says John, who is the food service director for the Elizabethtown Area School District.
Lessons include proper parachute packing, proper technique for leaving the plane, directional handling of the chute, and flaring, which controls how the diver lands.
While the burden of responsibility is high, John was totally comfortable with providing his daughter's training.
"She has been packing my parachute for years," he says. "So it's not like everything about the sport was foreign to her."
For their first five attempts, new jumpers are required to have someone launch their pilot chute for them as soon as they leave the plane. Gone are the days when rip cords would rip or get stuck, as many have seen in movies and Bugs Bunny cartoons.
The pilot chute is now responsible for releasing the primary chute, which, in turn, allows the diver to land safely.
In time, Maureen, who has now made three jumps, hopes to reach the elevations her father has become familiar with.
"The average jump is from around 10,000 feet," Maureen says. "And the whole thing can last more than five minutes, depending on the weather."
On Maureen's second flight, Beth flew with her family on an observation ride.
"It's exciting and terrifying," Beth says. "It's definitely not the same as watching from the ground."
As nervous as she sounds when talking about her family, Beth, too, knows what it's like to jump from a plane. After watching her husband parachute to earth many times, she built up the nerve to do a tandem jump back in 2004.
In a tandem jump, two sky divers are joined together and share one parachute. One controls the flight, while the other — hopefully — enjoys the ride.
"Everything in my body told me to stay in the plane," Beth says. "They practically had to peel me out to get me to jump."
With that said, though, Beth is glad she has the experience under her belt. But even more so, she is glad the ground is back under her feet.
"I completely understand how people can become addicted to the rush," she says. "But it's one and done for me. I see no solo jumps in my future."
John and Maureen intend to go up every chance a calm wind allows. And as if Mom doesn't get nervous enough, the couple's other two daughters, Michelle, 13, and Molly, 10, have expressed an interest in following in the family's contrail.
Both will have to wait until they turn 18, which is sky diving's legal age of participation.
"One you've done it, you never look at the sky in the same way again," Maureen says. "It's an entirely different kind of freedom."
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