As any young man would, when I met Kurt he would regale me with stories of his daring. Like, jumping out of planes to parachute down. Maybe he made more than one jump–this was the only certificate I could find. What I do know is that either this or one of these jumps blew him into a barbed wire fence and gave him some scars.
Boy, the memories are really coming back! Kurt parachuting! The next time I saw him after his jump he was really excited about it and told me what a rush it was and I had to do it! Now, I’m an adrenaline junky of the first degree, into fast anything but I tell him “Hell No!”, which by the look on his face really surprised him a lot. He didn’t understand until I reminded him of my parents. My Mom and Dad met working for American Airlines and got married in the late 1940’s. As a result of this, I am genetically programmed to Never jump out of a functionally well flying airplane! Kurt thought about this for about 2 seconds and then membered this, and we had a good laugh and went off to do something else, probably stupid and dangerous, for fun!