Steve Stories
So many of the stories included here contain the first person pronoun "I" that I know you are wondering who the heck wrote them. It is simply impossible to write about Steve in the third person because we knew each other so well for so long. We met in tenth grade and maintained a relationship of one type or another until the day he died. The "I" in these tales is simply an old girlfriend, friend, confidante, advisor, and one who often required his support and caring. I prefer to remain anonymous. The information and a few paragraphs found in most of these stories came from Bob or Steve's mother, Carroll, though some of it is personal recollection and things Steve told me in letters and conversations. As with all memories, there are fuzzy parts and some is second and maybe even third hand. If you have corrections or clarifications, email bob
How did I get involved in adding more Steve Stories to the Memorial Web Site? I am a high school English teacher. Years ago I was explaining the concept of foils to my Honors 10 students-characters who are totally opposite and set each other off by contrast. Sometimes they become fast friends. I gave the real life example of Steve and me. I am the type who fastens my seat belt, obeys the speed limit, hates to fly, and prefers to sit at home with a good book. You know how Steve was. The students became fascinated with Steve and definitely NOT fascinated with yours truly. Several of the boys became Steve's unofficial fan club. They wanted to know about everything he did. Naturally, I had to censor some of his activities. Their fondest wish was to meet the glorious Steve, their idol. This idolatry went on until they were seniors.
Steve, in his usual generous way, arranged to take one of his Charlotte layovers to come and visit the boys. They could hardly contain themselves, checking every few minutes to see if he had arrived yet. I had given him very specific directions, but when he finally got to my classroom, he bitched that I hadn't included any distances, just landmarks. My response was, "Hey, I'm not a pilot and you got here, didn't you?"
Steve spent lots of time showing his fan club pictures of his BASE jumps, CRW, and hang gliding. I made certain before he came that none of the photos showed him doing any of these things in the nude. That night he attended a high school football game, probably the first one he had been to since we graduated. He ogled the cheerleaders, of course, but spent most of the time entertaining his fan club with totally untrue stories about how I behaved in college. He claimed I had attended a toga party with him, which I most certainly did not, but for days after that I had to hear, "Toga! Toga!" from a bunch of sophomores. Steve couldn't even go to the restroom without some kid saying, "Hi, Steve!" while poor Steve tried to do his business. But he loved the attention.
He planned a hiking trip with his fan club and asked me to go along, as if that was going to happen. My husband had been very understanding where Steve was concerned, not minding if Steve stayed in our guest bedroom or if I visited him wherever he was living at the time, chaperoned, of course, but I think he would have drawn the line at long nights in the woods together. Somehow the boys ended up not going-perhaps Steve's reputation frightened their parents or something (I wonder why?)-but he did call them, talked to their parents and really tried to set the whole thing up. In the end, it was just Steve, his current girlfriend, and his niece and nephew who went on the trip, which was probably for the best. Beth and Rob got to spend quality time with Steve just before he died. His fan club didn't dreamed that they would never have another chance to go hiking with him, and I never dreamed that that night would be the last time I would ever see him.
I was devastated by his death, and one of the hardest things I have had to do was tell the boys what had happened. All of my students felt that they had lost someone they knew, if only by reputation. I was inundated with flowers, cards, and letters. One boy even presented me with a rabbit's foot, saying I probably needed a little luck right about then. His fan club even stopped wearing those hideous CRW black tee shirts that proclaimed Steve "Dead Man Morrell." They didn't seem cool any more. I spent the school year of 1996-1997 on auto-teacher, but we all got by and eventually began to heal. I can now stop being miserable because I lost him but happy that I had him in my life at all.
Steve's legend lives on in my school. Stories have been passed down from grade to grade. His original fan club has graduated from college. One member is in law school at Duke. (He still has that tee shirt.) My current students still beg for Steve Stories. Telling them creates a living memorial to my first love and a wonderful, loving friend.
Wild Things
Steve himself was not the only wild creature in his biography. To be fair, his pets were not exactly wild in the true sense of the word, but a couple of them were certainly unusual.
Somehow we both had saltwater aquariums at the same time. Great minds think alike, I guess. Mine held nothing more threatening than a ribbon eel, which immediately committed suicide as soon as I put him in the tank. Steve, on the other hand, purchased a moray eel, possibly one of the ugliest denizens of the deep and certainly carnivorous. The eel had to be fed live goldfish, which I complained about incessantly--those poor goldfish, swimming around, minding their own business, then suddenly dumped into saltwater and gobbled by that hideous eel.
One day, Steve got an idea of how the goldfish must have felt. For some reason he had his hand in the aquarium, and he forgot that he had on his Citadel class ring, which, of course, was gold. The moray eel, with about two functioning brain cells, did not differentiate between the ring and a goldfish. I'm not sure what happened next-Steve was deliberately vague on that point-but I fear the eel did not fare very well once Steve got its teeth out of his finger.
Steve's next pet was Otis, the Vietnamese pot bellied pig. Otis was a baby pig when Steve acquired him, and Steve housetrained him just as one would a dog. He really loved that pig. A pig, however, is one of the most intelligent animals in the world, maybe smarter than Steve. Otis learned to open the refrigerator door his snout, and Steve came home to a huge mess. Otis had pulled all the shelves out of the refrigerator and eaten everything. He also used his snout to push windows out. By this time, Steve had also acquired his golden retriever, Alex, and Alex escaped through the open window. Intelligent Otis was probably trying to eliminate the competition.
Otis's intellectual once got the better of him. Steve had him outside one autumn day when Otis discovered a jack-o-lantern on the neighbor's front steps. Ever curious, Otis examined this foreign object a little too closely and got his head stuck inside. He ran all over the place with the pumpkin stuck on his head.
Finally, Otis got to be too much for Steve to handle along with the dog, so he took Otis to his parents. (Not the pig's parents. Steve's parents.) When he ate a hole in the Morrells' floor, Otis had to go. They sent him to what they term a "pig palace" with others of his kind. Steve went along for the sad farewell, and onlookers claim they might actually have seen tears Steve's eyes. Otis ended up weighing around 300 pounds and growing tusks. Steve's mother was glad that Steve never saw Otis in that state and that his memories were of a cute little pig. Otis died when he was nine, still living at the "pig palace."
Finally, there is Alex, the Golden Retriever. Steve adored Alex. He took him everywhere, including hiking and camping trips. He also considered Alex to be a babe magnet. Steve was walking down the beach one day, trolling for women with Alex in tow, and two bikini clad girls came over to lavish attention on the dog and, by association, Steve. Things were going well until Alex began to show some signs of distress, and one of the girls asked, "What is that white stuff coming out of your dog?" Steve looked at the poor canine's rear, and something alien was indeed coming out of Alex's, uh, rectum. Steve tried to be cool about it and gently tugged at the white material while still trying to keep the girls from escaping. But the mysterious material was not budging. Finally, Steve had to turn his full attention to poor Alex, only to discover that Alex had apparently ingested a pair of sweat socks. Relieving the situation required quite a bit of tugging and downright pulling before the sweat socks were finally freed. When Steve looked up, naturally the girls were nowhere to be seen.
Alex accompanied Steve on hiking and camping trips, as already stated. Unfortunately, during the last trip, Alex began to show symptoms of some major health problems. Shortly after that, Steve was killed and Alex went to live with Robert and Carroll, Steve's parents. Alex is still with us and doing fine, despite getting along in years. I love to rub him and pet him whenever I visit the Morrells. He's one of the few links we have to Steve. When the inevitable happens and Alex joins Steve in heaven, the Morrells plan to have him cremated and to scatter his ashes over Steve's grave. That will be a very appropriate best friends.
El Cap
Steve went to jump El Capitan in Yosimite National Park, which required a lot of coordination, not just because of the danger, but because the jump is illegal. Steve had to hike to the jump spot, no small problem in itself. There was an issue with his assistants who did his job with dispatch, yet found that he had not brought enough water. Of course Steve didn't care, because he was not hiking back down... More important than the jump hike, there was the coordination of the landing site, a field some distance from the base. As in Steve' s days of urban building jumping, a good getaway van and nerves-of-steel driver were essential. You had to have a reliable person at the site to spirit you away before the authorities arrived. Unlike the building jumps, there was a much longer time between the time Steve and his team split up and time when they had to be back together to make their escape. In this case, Steve relied on an unidentified female who, to her credit, was in the right spot, ready to pick him up. The nerves-of-steel part is in question.
The jump at El Cap is one of the most spectacular BASE jumps there is (probably explaining why Steve had to do it), allowing one of the maximum free fall times of any cliff in the world. Steve used most of it. When he dumped his pilot chute, he had a spinning malfunction. El Cap is so high that it is one of the few BASE jumps where it makes sense to carry a reserve chute. Steve saw the rock pile coming up quickly cut his main and dumped his reserve.
Steve did not have time to prepare for a landing among a pile of boulders, and cracked some ribs and twisted an ankle pretty badly. Some rock climbers helped carry him down. Unfortunately, the getaway driver was so far away, she could not see Steve once he fell among the rocks and she flipped out. This was in the Days of Yore, before cell phones, so she had no way to communicate with Steve or the hike team. She went to a pay phone and called the park rangers to tell them that a Captain Steve Morrell had been killed on El Capitan. She even gave them Steve's home phone number, though exactly why they would require the phone number of a "dead" man is unclear. No nerves-of-steel, perhaps, but no fool either, she apparently fled.
In what was to foreshadow the infamous hike out of the desert in Saudi Arabia (more on that later), it took six hours for Steve to reach the pick up site, where he found no ride home. How exactly he got home is one of the many Mysteries of Steve, but when he arrived, there were two messages on his answering machine (the Days of Yore did include answering machines). The first message was from the park service, which was quite eager to talk to an actual dead man, having tramped all over the rock pile looking for his body. Finally the rock climbers informed them that he was, in fact, alive. They proceded to charge him, with "Unautorized aerial delivery of a person without a permit" . A felony would have gotten Steve dismissed from the Air Force. As Steve, the eternal optimist, said later, "If you throw enough money at something, it will go away," and the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. Time has obscured exactly how this was done. The lawyer cost many thousands of dollars, but "throwing money" at the problem meant that Steve could stay in the Air Force. One version has the charges being reduced to not with jumping off the cliff, but to "disturbing Kestral nests". Event though Kestrals routinely dive past their nests at over 150 mph, the Federal government believes that baby Kestrals would be disturbed by seeing a human go by at a paltry 120 mph. Another version of the story says this was what the original charge was, there being no real law against jumping off cliffs. As for the Park Service, Steve joked, "We'll have no gravity in this park, young man!" However the Air Force knew about the entire affair because the Park Service had contacted them from the start,and the AF decided Steve needed his "wings clipped,' so to speak.
Saudi Stories
After Steve's El Capitan jump, the Air Force decided to cool his behind somewhere, as in somewhere away from the officers who had had to deal with the park rangers. In the old days when his dad was a pilot, the standard place was some radar station in alaska. Steve's father had several friends who drew this punishment. In the 80's though, there was a better place than mountainous (ie lots of cliffs) and now thoroughly modernized Alaska: there was Saudi Arabia. Hot, strict and far away. It doesn't get any better than that as punishment.
How hot is it in Saudi? Well, the Air Force made Steve sign a formal, explicit contract before he left that acknowledged in writing that he understood how hot it was and that he would not ask to come home because of the heat. (Steve said later even that did not prepare him for how hot it was.)
Now there is an important thing to understand about Steve in the 80's. Steve had gone to college with many people from the middle east. The nephew of the king of jordon was one of his classmates (his father had been assasinated) and an number of his classmates were children of Iranian bigwigs in the Shah's government. Most were stranded in the US when the Iranian revolution took place (a number of their parents were executed or missing by graduation) Furthermore, by this time Steve had already travelled all over the world, and had a very loudly proclaimed multi-culturalism. "It's not them, it is just their culture" was his often (read: ad nauseum) repeated phrase. Those of us parochials back in the states (including those, who had knocked about much of the same territory 30 years before) who thought this or that group of foreigners were a bit off were just narrow minded and un-cultured. So it cannot be said that what happened to Steve in Saudi did not cheer some people up a bit....
What happened started on the first day he got there. His family Bible was confiscated by the "mutaween" or religious police. It is worth noting that this Bible was tucked as far down in his luggage as a 20's something military pilot who hasn't read it since the last big flight school exam could stuff it. Actually, there are several who believe Steve could not have found it if they had told him to. When he asked later if he would get it back, he was told no, it was already destroyed. These people don't mess around, Steve thought.
This was confirmed a few months later when Steve was invited by a friend to attend an execution. Two men were beheaded (Steve thought it was for drug dealing) He got a great "I attended a double header tee shirt" but admitted privately that it shook him up to see the sword fall and the heads roll. Even more disconcerting was an accompanying execution by stoning of a woman for adultery. The stoning methods were much more modern than the old pick up and hurl a stone of biblical times. The woman was placed in a pit, and a dumptruck full of rocks was backed up and emptied on her. "It's not them, it's just their culture" Steve repeated to himself, with considerably less conviction.
Steve's job in Saudi was flying bigwig passengers in a turbo prop. This was at the time of the first Gulf crisis, when Iran was our enemy and Iraq our friend, al beit a "friend" that accidentally fired a missle at one of our cruisers killing 34 sailors. Steve flew cabinet secretaries and ambassadors up and down the gulf, getting radar locks from missle batteries on the Iranian coast, which qualified him for hazardous duty pay. One day he co-piloted for a Colonel who wanted to fly the Egyptian ambassador to cairo. Now, flying colonels' are a joke even his father's days in the Air Force. They fly only enough to keep their rating, and so are known for screwups. The colonel wanted to spend time with the ambassador, and assigned Steve to help if he got in trouble flying. He did. He flew into one of the worst sandstorms in Egyptian aviation history. Very quickly the colonel realized he was going to lose the plane without help, so he turned it over to Steve, who had been sweating bullets watching things go from bad to worse. Steve brought the plane down in a howling wind with no visibility on some remote runway, earning a citation, and a friend in high places he would need later.
Security on the base was very tight, so much so that Steve was instructed to check his car or jeep over for bombs before starting it. This was very weird to Steve because his vehicles were on a gated base gaurded by the local military. When Steve pointed this out to his commander, the commander nodded as if to say EXACTLY. Steve got the message.
Steve was by this time less than enamoured with Saudi customs. One night, he met an Irish nurse at a party and offered to drive her home. They got on the road, but had misjudged the time, for the sun was setting and they were still on the road. Why the worry? because the mutaween, who had confiscated his bible were out at that time to start checking cars. No woman, saudi or non saudi are allowed to be in a car with anyone but their husband or brother. It appears that this rule applies all day but that the mutaween only enforced it at night. Steve looked ahead and saw a mutawen roadblock. Steve grabbed a blanket from the back of the car and pushed the nurse down on the floorboard, and covered her with a blanket. Steve got through the roadblock. Some later suggested that the police ignored the obvious lump on the floorboard to avoid a national incident. Steve did not believe it, for by this time Steve's opinion of the Saudi people was very very low, particularly for an avowed multiculturalist.
The problems ultimately centered around a single phrase: Inshallah. This phrase, steve was told meant "If Allah permits" or "God willing". The Saudis used this phrase for everything, and used it to procrastinate worse than a cable TV repairman. Want your airline tickets? "we will have them Inshallah" Need the water main repaired? We will fix it inshallah". Steve came to hate that term, several times almost snapping and grabbing the speaker by the collar and yelling: "I don't want it inshallah, i want it thursday!"
But he held back, after all, "It's not them, its their culture" He also reminded himself that this was a country where literally 99% of the people had been living in tents in the desert just one generation before. Allowances must be made.
What finally broke the back of Steve's multiculturalism was when his car's emergency brake broke. He could pull the brake lever up, but it would not lock. Steve took it to a repair shop that was reputed to be able to handle Steve's brand of car and explained the problem to the Saudi mechanic. The mechanic said that he would fix it, Inshallah. Steve ground his teeth, but said nothing and left. Just before lunch the mechanic called and said that allah was merciful, he had it fixed. Steve brightened and got a ride to the shop. He paid the mechanic, and hopped in the car. he had actually gone a block before he looked down at the emergency brake. Where the handle had been was nothing. Where the handle went into the floorboard was a neat patch of duct tape. Steve angrily turned around and drove back to the mechanic. When Steve demanded a explanation, the mechanic eagerly replied: Steve had had trouble because the brake's locking mechanism would not work. By removing the brake, he no longer had this problem, no? What finally did if for Steve was the realization that the mechanic was very pleased with himself for the cleverness of this solution, and still was expecting steve to praise him for his imaginative thinking. Steve said later that right then and there he realized: "Its not their culture, these people are #$!@ messed up!"
You would think that, having been charged with a felony in the States, barely escaping expulsion for the Air Force, being sent to Saudi as a punishment-and all for BASE jumping from a cliff-Steve would have been a little chastened. Alas, no. What did he do as soon as possible after arriving in Saudi? He went looking for a cliff, the purpose of which it does not take a genius to guess. (I must interject here: He sent me a photograph of himself at the bottom of said cliff, looking happy as could be, with this caption on the back: " Me, shortly after making the first cliff jump in Saudi Arabia, a bitching 500 foot cliff I found in the desert!" Actually, it's one of my favorite photos of him. It captures perfectly his personality, his smile, and that devilish gleam in his eyes. Also, the caption in pencil was so very Steve. Did the man ever write with a pen?)
If I'm not mistaken, this must have been the very cliff that almost cost Steve his life but also saved his life in a bizarre turn of events. Near the end of 1988, Steve did a jump from a cliff in the middle of the desert, far from the nearest road. Friends video- taped the entire affair. Immediately before the jump, Steve, ever the macho man, grabbed his crotch, yelled, "Party 'til impact!" and jumped. Very shortly after that, there was a thud, clearly audible on the tape, followed by some pretty loud screaming allllll the way to the bottom. Then silence. The friends at the top of the cliff started yelling, "Steve, are you all right?" repeatedly, probably for several minutes. Finally Steve's tiny voice could be heard from below, "Nooooooooo!" He had rammed into the cliff, shattering both feet and ankles. Later, he showed the video (to me anyway) over and over, finding it highly amusing. Weird.
It took his friends several hours to carry Steve back to their vehicle. At one point, Steve claims that vultures were circling overhead like something out of a grade B movie. By the time he made it to the hospital his feet and legs had turned totally black. The Air Force would surely look upon this latest incident unfavorably, considering why he was there in the first place, so the official story became that he was rock climbing without a rope. I'm not sure which was dumber. ( I knew about the new BASE jumping, but I don't know who else in the States did. It took his family a little while to see through the rock climbing story. Apparently the Air Force either bought it or pretended to.)
Due to his little "rock climbing" mishap, while he was in the hospital, Steve missed his flight home for Christmas. That flight turned out to be Pan Am Flight 103, which blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. If it hadn't been for his illegal BASE jumping, he would have died in 1988, and we would not have had him with us for eight more years. (As soon as I heard about Pan Am Flight 103, as usual my Steve ESP clicked in and I called his mother and learned, and as usual, that Steve had literally dodged another bullet.) Steve told me later that he thought he could have survived the disaster because he always had his parachute as carry-on luggage, and if he had had enough time, he could have bailed out. However, having just spent eighteen months in Saudi and being the only survivor MIGHT have cast some suspicion him. He was such an optimist, I always thought a fitting epitaph for his tombstone would be, "This is only a temporary setback."
Steve's mother has a great picture of Steve on his military flight home, both feet in casts after surgery to put his feet and ankles back together with as many screws, bolts, plates, etc., as required to create the bionic man, a big smile on his face that clearly says, "I am stoned on pain killers." In fact, he frequently said that he never let anyone forget when he had a dose scheduled-nurses, doctors, custodians, whoever. Macho man could only take so much pain after all.
The Dead Steve chronicles as told by J.D. Walker 12/1/09
Our story begins with a forwarded Email from an old buddy of mine, Nick Bender. In the usual course of a days emails, Nick was kind enough to forward an email from someone who knew Steve, and was talking to Nick - and Nick knew I held Steve near and dear as a friend. I met Nick at the old Wildhorse West dropzone in NW Phoenix, about 1980 or maybe 1981. Its about then that Carl Boenish and a few others were starting to experiment with flinging their mortal bodies off things - not out of things, but off of things - and saving their lives at the last second with a parachute, from other cliffs than El Cap. All since a few, idiot jack-asses, (if you're one of 'em, yea, I'm talking about you ) couldn't follow a few, simple rules, and got the once legal El Cap closed down IDIOTS
It's Nick's fault I'm a convicted trespasser and a wanted BASE jumper....did he and Steve Morrell ever do a paternity test to confirm they weren't at least half-brothers?
I must ask, because they were both wild eyed crazy men and both got me into trouble - hah! ( I should've been a lib, 'cause I blame others for everything....)
Steve and I met purely by chance, at the Lodi drop zone, in California, in 1984 I believe, when I was trying to snivel on a load, as I was a stranger there, and this charismatic guy walks up and says "I'll jump with ya", and off we went - a 4 way followed by, at this guys' suggestion, a 3500' pull and a 4 way CRW stack - Ken on top, Steve was #2, and then me - a poor approach, too hot of a dock, and a total wrap..shit !!!!.....
The moron above us got scared, and dropped us, not good. As we were descending, fairly rapidly, I was asking Steve, "what do you want to do?" - he was, after a few gyrations, turned 180 degrees, facing me, and trapped in my cascades....and he finally asked me to cut away - to which I replied no - and he, being the rational, cool and calm dude he was, kept asking if I could see this line, or that line, asking "whats hanging up", etc, and about 12-1300' or so, finally, he calmly, coolly, says "I'd appreciate it if you'd just cut away" -
So, fearing I would leave him totally screwed, and just knowing his reserve would just get entangled with his main, and for the hundredth time asking "are you sure ?" I did as he asked. I chopped it, and took as long as a delay as I could (before I got scared and pulled, truth be told!), saddled out, probably about 500' or so, and scanning upwards, straining to see what was happening above me, I see this body go whizzing by....Dead Steve, in total freefall..... and, maybe at about 400', or less, he arched, pulled, and his reserve opened, way below me, the canopy breathed, turned slightly, and he hit the ground. Wow. A 5 second ride, at best....that lucky bastard, I'm saying out loudly....in middle of a bunch of grape vine stakes, great place to impale oneself' should one desire....
I landed only a few yards away, and, seeing him gathering up his stuff, apparently no worse for the wear, it dawned upon me this guy is probably pissed at me for the hot dock, hostilities could be in my immediate future....there goes my pretty face....
Asking if he were OK, he laughed loudly and said, a phrase I would become very familiar with, "never had so much fun in my life!"
That was our first 30 minutes together.....
That night, after being invited to hang at his place, we were drinking beer, some of the guys partaking in other vices, and packing parachutes - it was dark, and Steve was about to start packing, when he shouts out " I feel lucky, lets go do the bridge!" That would be the 740' high Auburn bridge, east of Sacramento. It was a local favorite of the BASE jumpers in the area, and I had wanted to do it, but jeez, not tonight....I had just had the shit scared out of me earlier that afternoon and I was calming down by indulging in a few beers, and I was buzzed - as was Steve and the others - but that didn't stop Steve! He packed for the bridge, as I did also, after being pressured by the group - Steve Morrell, chief antagonist!
There was a group of us, and I cant recall everyone, but I do remember Dave Majors (aka "Clem") jumping first, and landing OK, then Steve hurriedly threw his rig on, and without a pin check, jumped up on the rail, and with a holler of "wet death", hopped off, and promptly threw out a pilot chute in tow - very, very bad - and as we watched in stunned horror, he looked over his shoulder at it, reached and pulled his reserve. We watched it happen, as if in slow motion, his reserve deploy, it finally blossomed, and Steve hit the water - 1 second later, he would've went in - again, the second time today, I'm saying WOW ....that lucky bastard !!!!
Alas, lucky mans' trouble was not quite over yet. As the reserve canopy settled into the fast moving river, it inflated in the current and away goes Steve - shit, he survived the jump, only to drown....as it turned out, Clem was finally able to get into the water and help rescue him, a little worse for wear. When we finally got down to the bottom and met them, he was absolutely exhausted, soaking wet, but, with a shit-eatin' grin says - "never had so much fun in my life"
All this, start to finish, in about a 12 hour span....."Dead Steve", my new friend, was truly "a lucky bastard"!
As much fun as that day was, we went on to make many great trips together, I introduced Steve to my secret spots in Lake Powell, where we made several trips together, (Steve broke his ankle on a wall strike there) and those trips are a hoot in their own right, as well as our little "shit tower", just south of Phoenix, all 290' of it - we made tons of jumps of that - and some fun places in our local lakes, little cliffs from 150 - 300', and the famous Burro Creek bridge, those were fun.
We also put a trip or two together to N/E Arizona, to Canyon De Chelly, where we watched a friend slam into a huge rock a break his foot up bad - that was not good. We got some commercial quality footage out of that trip - you may have seen video of it - as well as a trip to Yosemite, where we missed each other at the hookup spot and hiked up without him, and, as luck would have it, we got caught, and Steve didn't - (again, that lucky bastard!). On that episode, I was able to beat the Federal government out of the charges, and my experiences were the foundation for many others, including Steve later on, to beat them at there own game. (that is a great story in its own too).
Well Bob, there you go - a little taste of my experience with an incredible man, a true friend and certified crazy guy! Thank you for allowing my to share, with a big grin on my face, your brothers life - never forget him.
My Best,
JD Walker
Grand Canyon # 1
BASE 37
Night BASE 25
A Base Jump tragedy
This story, passed on to me by JD Walker does not involve Steve directly except for a mention, but the gritty determined optimism is one piece with many of the stories I heard Steve tell years ago.
My notes regarding the following story - from JD Walker-
Here is a great story regarding the terrible base jumping accident I was involved in, in 1993, that I was not aware of until after my friend Steve, the writer, had passed away from cancer.
The story was shared with me by a mutual friend, who shared it with me (right before he died too, we tragically lost him to cancer in 2012).
Steve and several others were there and actually witnessed the accident firsthand; Steve also had a helmet mounted camera that he had taken off his head & sat on the ground having just landed from his jump off the cliff, and actually filmed the incident. Although it is a very long ways away, it gives us a real view of what actually happened and a timeline to gauge speeds at impact. I did not see this short video film until nearly 15 years after it was taken. I did not know this tape existed either until Steve was gone; and when I saw it, I was spellbound not only by the visual image, but also by the actual comments caught on the video tape by the people standing around the camera as it happened -
The hardest part about updating the story now, is that almost every single person in this story, is no longer with us. I laugh and I cry at the same time when I read back and smile about all the things we had done as younger men...... (And yes a few of these jumpers were women)
Reading the story gave me a new appreciation for my life, and for those around me who have been such an important part of my " first life " as I call it ..... ...
Here it is, with my "side notes" in parentheses.
JD Walker 2011
What really happened in the Grand Canyon Mother's Day, 1993
By Steve McElwain
This story starts with my actual meeting of Jon Bowlin, whom I met at the Lodi drop zone in Northern California in the late 1980s, and later on, he was the person who introduced me to JD Walker.
Jon was a well-known rock climber, with several "firsts" to his credit, he had climbed in South America, (Patagonia), and was well known in the Yosemite Valley climbing circles in the 70s and 80s. He was smart, and was fascinated with new things, he read a lot, and what was really cool was he had started a bungee jumping business that he used to do on the weekends, with the college kids from UC Davis, and other colleges around the Sacramento area, making really good cash on the side, and meeting lots of cool college chicks - one of whom, Susan, he started dating and eventually married in early 1993.
Like many climbers, John was a smaller but stocky man, however unlike many climbers, Jon was quiet respectable of others, and treated everyone with a smile, he was not a stuck-up snob like so many of his climbing peers, I really loved the guy.
Jon had told me the story of how Jon and JD were first brought together by famed freefall cinematographer Carl Boenish, in I believe 1982 or '83, where they worked on a documentary about low level cliff jumping in north eastern Arizona. Jon had heard about Carl, and had contacted him, inquiring about using his climbing skills to access cliff jumping sites that were not normally accessible without climbing gear, and Carl had told him about an upcoming project with JD that he would be filming and doing a story on, and suggested Jon come along and meet him. Also on this trip, was Tee Taylor-Brydon, the world's female Parachuting champion in 1964, who was still jumping even though she was in her 50s, and Ted Strong, the owner and founder of strong Enterprises, a huge civilian and military contractor for parachute equipment. (JD - everyone except Tee, that was on that trip has since passed, in mostly jump accidents, Ted died in 2012 I believe, with health issues)
JD was one of, if not the, world's most experienced cliff jumper at the time, and was also an experienced parachute rigger who was always coming up with new ideas on BASE jumping equipment that he built and tested himself. ( JD - that's really not such a big deal, people had only been jumping cliffs for about the past two or three years at that time and no one had more than a few dozen cliffs under their belt- and there were two other friends of mine, who had far better cliffs under their belt than the stuff I was jumping off of - Mo Viletto & Mark Hewitt ).
Carl was well known worldwide, and had worked in Hollywood extensively on movies and TV productions since the mid-60's, involving Ariel stunts and skydiving.
It was on this trip to Northeast Arizona, where Jon and JD first met, and JD actually instructed Jon and saw him through to making his first two cliff BASE jumps on that trip, off the 500 foot cliff they were filming from. ( JD- the cliffs were in the "Canyon del Muerto", or
" Canyon of Death", in translation to English, in Canyon de Chelly National monument)
When I started skydiving, I was already a photographer, and the new lightweight helmet mounted remote cameras were just coming into the norm, I built a set up and started filming skydivers whenever I could, and then Jon introduced me to his base jumping buddies, a very small but tightknit group of guys who were running around California, jumping off of things with their parachutes. I went along on many of these trips, but they were usually at night, to avoid the authorities, it was rare we did something in daylight but I always filmed everything I could, when I could. One of my favorites was the Auburn bridge outside of Sacramento, and of course El Capitan in Yosemite.
I was invited along on a trip to the little Colorado River Gorge, the first trip in 1992, east of the Grand Canyon, where JD had found several cliffs to jump off of, that were pretty tall, nearly 2000 feet, they were awesome, it required a helicopter to get to the top, (and to get out of the bottom), and required rappelling skills to get to the launch point of the best one of the cliffs, JD called it "the nose", because as you saw in the helicopter from the side, it looks like a great big nose on the face of the wall. That one was nearly 1700 feet top to bottom with an overhanging launch point, which gave you a good margin for error if you had a backwards opening, which I did one time with my parachute lines getting tangled in my camera, however that extra room gave me enough time to clear this before I ran into anything - whew.
My first trip there was extraordinary, we had two good days of jumping weather, and I was able to make five jumps, (JD got 6) which is unusual in these types of Canyon Settings, as it is almost always too windy, especially in the afternoons - which sucked, because the best lighting on those walls was usually after mid-day and in the afternoons. That canyon's walls were like a rusty orange, and dirty red, with white or yellow jumpsuits the photographs of jumpers in free fall were extraordinary against that background.
And so, on Mother's Day weekend in 1993, JD was leading a second unit production for the filming of a TV commercial I believe, and was out at this site for film production. It was a 4 day gig, and the producer released all the crews at the end of the 3rd day, and since there were park permits, Indian permits, helicopters and hotels paid for, that he could not get back, he did not want to waste a day that he could be jumping the best legal cliff known at that time, so, he called a bunch of close friends, and said "if you can get here by the morning, you can jump for free". Wow - I packed and hit the road as fast as I could.
That was too good to pass up, everyone had heard of this place, but no one but JD knew the ins and outs of how to make it actually work. Of course Jon was called as well, as were several others, I flew into Phoenix and rented a car, Jon and Susan drove from Sacramento. There were two other guys I knew from the Sacramento area, who were friends of Jon's, who also came; several of JDs other friends came up from Phoenix and Tucson as well.
(JD - in that time period, everywhere we went we were arrested for trespassing or other made-up charges because people did not like or understand what we were doing, it was a real hassle to find a legal spot to jump from )
And so, things got off to a good start, everyone had jumped except for Jon and JD, they would jump last on this round. I had just jumped off with one of JDs friends, Ned, who was a retired firefighter he knew from Phoenix. We had done a two-way, and I had filmed him, and he filmed me with POV views - I shot video, Ned shot stills. It was a very cool experience, after you opened your parachute, you had to fly down the canyon probably a quarter of a mile to a small landing area on a sandbar. You had to do it right, or you could get hurt really bad here........ or worse. You did not want to get hurt here, it would be a long, long time before you got any help, and even then that is if you were actually in the bottom of the canyon to start with. When I first talked to him about it, (before I'd actually been there) he seemed a little snooty about it, but JD was right when he was adamant about only experienced jumpers here.
We had just landed and I had taken off my helmet, set it on the ground, and was taking off my gloves and gear when Jon and JD called on the radio and said they were getting ready to go, then they jumped.
The plan was for JD to do a 6 second delay( about 400'), and Jon an 8 (about 600'), but as JDs parachute was opening, Jon's opened at the same time, in a surging hard turn, and instantly he ran into and entangled JD. Jon was dangling under JD, his parachute completely wrapped on and around him, they both looked helpless - and tragically he (Jon) did not have a reserve - he may have been able to use it had he had one.
JD's canopy appeared to be mostly open at first, we all started yelling and screaming, of course they were too far away and could not have heard us, (JD- it was at least 1/4 mi away) The canopy collision impact caused JDs parachute to turn, and with Jon's parachute wrapped around him, we all were screaming "turn turn turn" but within a few seconds, they ran into the wall, JD's parachute split right down the middle, and it started a high-speed whirling, almost helicopter-like spiraling descent; they slammed into the wall several times, and then, horrifically, at high speed they slammed into the ground at the base of the cliff, right where the wall met the talus, a good 400-500' up from the canyon floor - 45 degrees up, all boulders.
The whole thing could not have lasted more than about 10 or 12 seconds, it was awful to see - on my video, when I ran it back later at home and heard it, the audio was awful. Right after they slammed into the ground, I said aloud to everyone "we have to get up there, right now" to which Ned, who was an older gentleman who I'm sure had seen many terrible things in his day as a firefighter, simply & calmly replied "What for? They're both dead......... "
We had to cross the wash (that had flowing water in it, knee deep) and hike through boulders and brush the quarter of a mile or so to the bottom of the talus. Once there, I thought I heard voices, and one of the guys said " it sounds like they are still alive"
Again, Ned said " no way, not at that speed, and not landing in those rocks".
At that time, the helicopter pilot thought it was best to call for rescue, just in case, gave us his radio frequency to talk with him on, and he took off. He got into the air and broadcast out over open channel and was able to reach a someone who could call for a rescue team. We started up the talus, moving as fast as we could, cutting our hands, twisting our feet, everything was loose - it was a perfect scenario for someone else to get hurt as well.
It took us quite a while to get up there, at least 45minutes, maybe even an hour - we discovered there was no where to land a helicopter anywhere along the way; as we neared the guys, we could hear groaning when we stopped for breath, and sure enough when we got to the top, exhausted from the climb, there they were - Jon was laying spread out on a huge flat slab of rock, and JD was a few feet to the side, laying on top of a smashed bush or small tree, totally wrapped in Jon's canopy.
Incredibly, JD was awake, but like semi-delirious, and at first saying" Ah fuck, ah fuck," and then when he realized we were there, " come on man, one of you guys help me up" - he was kind of twisting, but not really moving, like he was crippled. Ned told me to try to calm him down, while he tried to check Jon........and, like in a nasty horror movie, there was blood everywhere. It was hard to believe that this was actually happening, and I was kneeling in their blood, it was all over my hands, trying to help, it was awful.
Right away, Ned said Jon had no real pulse, and he took his last breath moments later. Ned calmly said " he's gone" - it was surreal, this isn't really happening, right ?
His legs were obviously broken, his belly was really swollen, his head busted open. I was in a stunned state, and the other 2 guys who were Jon's friends were hysterical, one of them, named Joel I believe, keep saying "I gotta get out of here" - he finally did piss Ned off, who told him to "go on ahead and get the hell out of here, you're not helping in any way".
I was really disappointed in that dude, he was useless. Long afterwards, at another place he was talking shit about being there, I told everyone what a pussy he really was and he needed his ass kicked. I was PISSED, and I am usually a pacifist.
Ned was amazing, he keep talking calmly to JD, telling him to "shut up man, try to calm down", and that he shouldn't move, he & I tore up JDs parachute and wrapped up his bigger open wounds, the back of his head was blasted open, his mouth, his nose, even around his eyes were all gushing blood - he was cut everywhere - and he was going into shock. His face and arms were getting pale, almost white, ( as was Jon's), he had lost so much blood his pulse was very weak, when I asked Ned how's he doing, he would just look at me and shake his head side to side without saying it - " he's not going to make it ". I felt helpless, but Ned kept me busy trying to pacify JD, he was being very vocal, saying " Jesus man, come on, help me up" - he was delirious.
After what seemed eternity, another helicopter showed up, and at first they landed in the bottom next to our helicopter, the two pilots talked for a moment, and then incredibly the rescue helicopter flew up as close as he could to us, put just the front of one skid on a large rock, and let the rescue guys climb out that skid with their gear. It was windy, and gusty, that guy was one hell of a stick. They started to rig a setup to rope a basket down to a point where the helicopter could land, and loaded up JD in that basket. It seemed to take forever, but they finally got him out & on on the way down to where the chopper landed, the EMT I spoke to, said he wouldn't make it to the hospital ( in Flagstaff, 40 min flight away). He was white as a ghost by then.
It had been the worst day of my life, It was tough, and those rescue guys did a great job under difficult circumstances - but I believe it is Ned who JD owes his life too, up to that point. Ned saved Him.
The accident had occurred early in the morning, and it was nearly dark by the time we got all of our gear out of the bottom of the canyon and flown back up to the vehicles. We all headed towards the motel, in our own cars, about a 45 minute drive away, not saying anything. Ned and I had done our best to clean up, but we were covered in blood, our clothes were ruined. I was in a dramatic state, Ned was upset about what had happened, but he didn't show any emotion on the outside. The one thing I do remember him saying back at the hotel, was that he said JD had once told him, after another friend of theirs that I knew too - Dead Steve Morrell - had been killed in the past, "if you do this shit long enough, it'll catch up to you", and how ironic it was - it did catch up to Jon and JD.
How did this happen, to the most experienced cliff jumper in the world? To one of the most experienced rock climbers in the world? That thought ran over and over and over, all day in my mind. I had just watched a very good friend die, and wasn't sure if I'd ever see the other one again. I was kind of numb as while driving from the hotel to the hospital in Flagstaff, which was over an hour away, in the dark, out in the middle of nowhere, my thoughts were all over the place - I did not even know how I would tell Susan, that Jon had died, because I did not see her after we got out of the canyon bottom, ( unbelievably, she was on the top the entire time after this happened, she never went into the bottom of the canyon when we jumped, where she was she could not have seen what happened ), by the time I got back up top, she had already left in their car, I had to assume she talked to the cops who were up on top, standing around, (doing nothing like they usually do in those scenarios), but I didn't know at that time.
When I got to the hospital, I went into the emergency room, Ned had already arrived just before I did, and someone had told him that JD had died enroute, on the helicopter ride in to the hospital.
Because we weren't family, the hospital staff would not share anything with us, Ned told me he had to pull out his old firefighter credentials and ask another medic who happened to be there. I do remember some guy who might have been a doctor, came out and asked me a bunch of questions about JD, stupid things, that had nothing to do with what had actually happened. I had the distinct impression that he was not told what had happened, all he knew was "some fucked up guy arrived DOA", which I took great offense to because that "fucked up guy" was my friend, and he was looking for family contact information. I did not know anything else other than JD's home phone number, and I did not have it with me. With that, there was nothing else for me that I could do, so I drove back to Phoenix and took my flight home to San Fran the next morning. It was a very somber day that first day afterwards, I had never seen anything so dramatic, so terrible, it was awful, and I will never forget it.
Jon Bowlin, my parachuting and rock climbing buddy, with that shit-eatin grin on his face all the time, was gone, forever.
The following weekend, after I got numerous phone calls from jumping friends asking if I knew anything about it, I went out to the Lodi drop zone, where we frequently jumped at, and where I had met Jon years earlier. I was describing the story to some friends over a beer that evening, and someone I didnt know joined in on the conversation and said "no, I think you're wrong, I heard JD is still alive". I looked at him and I said no, I hate to tell you this, I saw him in his last moments, he was white as a ghost, The EMTs and his good friend who was a trained medical person, both said he was all but dead, and we had even been told at the hospital that he was DOA at the helicopter pad.
This guy kept on and insisted, and said "no, I know him and many of his friends, they heard it on the news, and one of his friends is a TV news reporter who had actually called or gone up to the hospital the next day and had said on TV news that he was still alive".
Now remember, this is before the Internet, and cell phones, our news only came from television news, papers, and telephone calls from other people. So sometimes information was slow to spread. Finally, one of JDs friends from Phoenix, ( I think his name was Nick), had told a good friend of mine that he had heard what happened, and he himself had been up to the trauma ward in Flagstaff, and had seen JD - and yes, he was still alive !
Finally, I got a chance to talk to one of the climbers who helped in the rescue. (Name of Paul ?) He had told me that he knew who Jon Bolin was, from his rockclimbing experiences, but he did not know he was actually working on him at the accident site. He also said that as soon as the helicopter landed at Flagstaff, they just take the victims off the bird, turn them over to the staff, and go on home. Thus, that explains why nobody knew what the hell was going on.
He said he had gone back the next day, asked about the guy they brought in, was told he was still alive and had actually seen him. He described one messed up dude. He was in a coma or unconscious ( later I learned it was for days), he was in a fetal position in his bed, and he was solid black, from all the internal blood leakage, from his chest down. He said they used every unit of plasma they had on the way in, and still his blood pressure was very low, and that he did not think he would make it. So, he said he was surprised to hear he had pulled through the night. He had also had the opportunity to meet JDs brother, who had come up from Phoenix, where he lived, and that brother was actually a trauma nurse and was helping to oversee what they were going to do with JD. ( I forgot his name).
He apparently was touch and go for several days, apparently when you have that much internal bleeding, strokes are very common and usually fatal, that was their single biggest worry. He had multiple fractures in his skull, both shoulders had been dislocated, there were seven vertebrae with compression fractures. Both hips had been dislocated; both had vertical fractures. His left ankle was broken, his right heel was shattered. Paul had told me that if this guy lived, he would have health issues the rest of his life.
It really did not sound good, in fact it sounded terrible. I knew JD had a wife and young children, and that he had just starting doing well at work in a new career. I still cannot get over the sight of them both laying there, and believe that he actually made it.
AND SO......... that's my version of the story, I know that JD has improved and I actually saw him a few years later. When we talked at length about that weekend, he just said how grateful he was do you have done so many really cool things in his life, and even better yet to still be alive, and that he was going to come back 100%, screw the doctors and their bad prognosis.
I hope he does.
Jon Bowlin - Godspeed my friend, until we meet again.
Steve McElwain