Lew Sanborn Marks 70 Continuous Years of Jumping
By John Bates
Features
Saturday, June 1, 2019
Remember when President Harry S. Truman announced over the family radio that there was a growing threat on the Korean Peninsula? Me neither. But U.S. Army recruit Lewis Barton Sanborn must have been paying close attention, as he was going Airborne and was about to make his first jump. On April 18, 1949, he made that jump—a static-line from 1,200 feet—over Fort Benning, Georgia. That was a long, long time ago. Seven decades, actually. But of all the things that have changed over the years, there is one constant: Sanborn was jumping then, and Sanborn is jumping now.
Seventy years to the day after that first jump, the now 88-year-old Sanborn made arrangements with longtime jump buddy Mark Cook to celebrate the occasion by making a jump on the North Shore of Hawaii. Two years earlier, Sanborn had made Hawaii the final site in his successful quest to jump in all 
50 states, and he wanted to visit again to celebrate another significant moment in his skydiving history.
On April 18, “Lew’s Load”—Lutz Andersohn, John Bates, Cook, T.K. Hinshaw, Lara Katine, Brett Martin, Brendan McHugh, Sascha Schindler, Ed White and Sanborn himself—assembled under clear blue skies and white, puffy broken clouds … a perfect Hawaiian day. Documentary producer and cameraman Ray Hollowell, founder of the ocean nonprofit seainspiration.org, was there to capture the event. With his signature grin, he was the first to say, “Remember, if it’s not on video, it didn’t happen.” His likely opening shot for the documentary will be the large white sign over manifest that said, “Congratulations, Lew, on Your 70 Years of Sky Diving.”
After chatting with the growing crowd of well-wishers, signing logbooks and making a couple of dirt dives both with and without gear, Lew’s Load was ready to get ’er done. On the ride out to the plane in the bed of a pickup truck, Sanborn—who holds USPA license D-1—punched the sky with his fist and shouted, “Eat your heart out, Istel!” a joking reference to Jacques Istel, USPA D-2. Years earlier, while on the same load, Sanborn and Istel simultaneously qualified for the first USPA D license and Instructor rating (USPA no longer numbers instructor ratings). Istel received I-1 and D-2; Sanborn received D-1 and I-2. They still stay in touch and over the years have maintained a warm but—needless to say—competitive relationship.
On the Grand Caravan, Sanborn—wearing his signature red jumpsuit—was as easy to pick out as a salesclerk at Target. His day had come, but as the turbines whined and the four-blade prop clawed for altitude, he straddled the bench calmly as if this were just another jump. At 14,000 feet, the Caravan leveled out on jump run and the aerial photographer, Schindler, opened the door to spot. Finally, the group climbed out and took in the spectacular view below, where hues of green, blue and deep, dark blue reflected off the mountains and ocean in high definition.
On the count of three, the load spewed from the aircraft, with a few of the divers doing an unplanned front flip out the door. From the ground, it must have looked like a goose in flight recycling a large dinner of overripe berries. And although perhaps inadvertent, the move looked orchestrated, somewhat technical and just plain cool on camera.
Stabilizing quickly, the base flew on heading and the others began to build on it, like bees returning to the hive using a stadium approach. The formation built steadily to completion and was rock solid. Everybody in! And Sanborn ... well, he was grinning. As planned, he waved off at 5,500 feet and pulled in place, and the rest of the load turned outward and tracked hard for another couple thousand feet to give him the sky … all of it, so he could enjoy the ride. A ride 70 years in the making.
Anyone who knows Sanborn knows that every jump is an accuracy jump for him. This one was no exception. Set up on the downwind leg with no interlopers in the pattern, Sanborn turned easily onto final in perfect wind alignment with the 10-meter pea pit and made a soft touch down just outside it.
After the jump, Sanborn meticulously logged it with the date, location and a description, just as he has for every jump since April 18, 1949. The logbook is so important to the sport that the International Skydiving Museum will display a copy of it when it builds its facility. In all likelihood, no one on the planet has jumped so consistently for so long. If there were an official world record for the most years of consecutive skydiving, it would undoubtedly be Sanborn’s.
The evening after his 70-year-anniversary jump, Sanborn reminisced about his career in the sport. It was a veritable tsunami of memories. He recalled how, as a member of the fabled 82nd Airborne and part of a battalion combat team, he made his 16th jump with fellow paratroopers from a C-82 Flying Boxcar that flew from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Vieques Island, Puerto Rico. The paratroopers made the stuffy, cramped, three-hour flight in a 19-plane formation to their designated drop zone. Heavily loaded with combat gear, airsick and restless, they finally got to “stand up, hook up and shuffle to the door.” Once under their round parachutes and wrapped in silent skies, life got better.
Exactly 363 days after his first jump, Sanborn was prepared (or so he thought) to make his first freefall. He exited from 1,500 feet (about 1,000 feet lower than USPA’s minimum opening altitude today) and took an eight-second delay before pulling the ripcord. The canopy opened fully at only about 500 feet, but Sanborn said that he “didn’t have enough experience to be scared.” In a case of beginner’s luck, he was belly to earth when he pulled, but there was just too much going on for him to process the ground rush. However, he remarked, “It is hard to call that jump ‘body flight’ because I was all over the sky.”
A lot of people were around to witness this event since freefall was a rarity in 1950. His instructor, Neil Stewart, a senior freefall parachutist with about 100 total jumps in his logbook, was rightfully concerned and highly relieved when he saw Sanborn’s white canopy de-reef and blossom. Sanborn got about four or five oscillations under the canopy before executing a rather routine PLF landing.
“My first two freefall jumps were with borrowed equipment,” Sanborn said. (He insists on calling them “jumps” because the term “skydive” was not introduced until years later.) “Rigs were rare back then,” he continued. “The few who owned them didn’t want to part with them. I bought my first one from Cook Cleland for $175; I still have the receipt.”
The risk Sanborn took to engage in freefall didn’t occur only during the jump. At the time, he was on active duty. “Back then, even having a freefall rig was a courts-marshal offense,” he said. “If we had a rig, used it and hurt ourselves or died, we would have been charged with destruction of government property. I had mine in my wall locker, and even though we stood regular inspections, the senior NCOs never said a word about it.”
He continued, “Our jumps were subject to the Army Reference Manual 95-19. Incidentally, that AR 95-19 can still be found online. Fortunately for us, we current jumpers need not comply. With the knowledge, training and techniques available today, reverting back to the 95-19 could likely induce catastrophic failure with the gear we now jump.”
Military advancement in rank was anywhere from slow to stagnant in the early ’50s ... until war broke out. But then, with America heading into armed conflict in Korea, rank accelerated rapidly to meet the growing demands of combat leadership. Sanborn was rapidly promoted to sergeant first class. By that time, he was already considered a professional parachutist in both military and civilian circles. And from that time forward, he has been recognized as one of the pioneers of this thing we call parachuting.
Although a few barnstormers at county fairs and holiday events preceded him in making freefall jumps, for the most part they kept their knowledge of stable freefall to themselves. Freefall was unique and was the barnstormers’ bread and butter, so it wasn’t in their self-interest to take kindly to competition. Sanborn, on the other hand, saw the value of growing the sport, as well the sport’s military application. He was anxious to teach any and all who wanted to jump.
In 1953, shortly after he completed his Army hitch, Sanborn got a call from Joe Crane, his longtime mentor and the first president of USPA (then called National Parachute Jumpers and Riggers). Crane told him that Lyle Hoffman, a former smoke jumper and parachute performer from Seattle, Washington, had been injured badly in an automobile accident on his way to an accuracy competition at a prestigious air show in Dayton, Ohio. Crane asked Sanborn to fill in. He was excited to accept and performed well at the event, in which jumpers exited from a Twin Beech and landed as closely as possible to a line marked on the ground. (There was no such thing as a tuffet at that time.)
Sanborn continued in his competitive career. In 1956, he represented America at the World Parachuting Championships in Russia. The next year, he competed in Yugoslavia. His legacy continued to grow, and in 1957, his company Parachutes Incorporated landed the contract to field and train the first military freefall parachute team. The effort, first titled Halo Phase 1, used the pyramid effect: Those who succeeded trained others. The outgrowth of that was the U.S. Army Golden Knights.
In May of 1959, Sanborn, along with George Flynn, Istel and Nate Pond, opened the Parachutes Incorporated drop zone in Orange, Massachusetts, the first purpose-built drop zone in America and the precursor to the drop zones we have today.
Many other parachuting accomplishments followed. But on the evening after his 70th anniversary jump, he stated with little hesitation that his proudest moment in skydiving was “probably today.” He remarked, “The 102-way [formation skydive], the 16-way CRW [canopy relative work, now called canopy formation] and representing the USA in team competition were certainly highlights, but they were shared with others. Today’s jump was private. Just me. All by myself.”
About the Author
John Bates, D-26112, spent most of his adult life as a U.S. Marine. He graduated from military freefall school in Yuma, Arizona, at the age of 53. Following retirement from active duty, he was the chief operating officer for the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. Currently, he is the newest (and oldest) member of Team FASTRAX and skydives with wounded warriors every time the door is open.