Valley Mills, Texas History

Not much to add without checking my log book, but the first dominant RW team in Texas (based at Valley Mills) was the V-Mills Texans.

The V-Mills team went to the Z-Hills Turkey Meet in the early 70's ('73 or '74?) and beat all comers for the big prize. Other teams included the James Gang (Bob Federman, Jim Bohr, Pirate, etc.), the local faves (captained by Jim Hooper), and a number of other good quality teams. That was back in the days when if you could average under 30 seconds for a 10-man (not "10-way"), you would probably win. And nearly everyone still jumped rounds and front-mounted reserves.

It wasn't until late '75 or early '76 that focus went from 10-man speed to 8-man sequential, as RWers were getting bored with race-to-the-base jumping. Then Z-Hills - always a few steps ahead of USPA's Nationals - added to their agenda for the Turkey Day meet with separate events for 10-speed, 8-sequential, 16-sequential, and 20-speed. I was lucky enough to be invited on Jerry Bird's team for the '77 meet. Since a Texas team wasn't in the works at that time, I quit my job just to spend a week or so in skydivers' paradise. That' still my all-time favorite meet.

Backing up to some points John made, V-Mills was the perfect storm of right place, right time, right jumpers. It was truly our own little world for a few short years, where we could forgot about the "real world" for many happy weekend adventures. And we made life-long friends from Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and other places.

Phil Mayfield - SCR 374

OK Guys, all those names are great; but what started in Seagoville (near the Federal Prison), participated in Wacko, then retired to VMills, was responsibile for at least 10% of N Texas area beer sales and was reached via a twin beech out of Love Field (it had radar - we ued it once to pinpoint our location while above the clouds - landed about 26 miles from the DZ - had to thumb home. Anyway, please add CH Lyons, Stevie Ray Cartwright, EL Dunn (remember EL DUnn?), Tommy Harrison, and Kent Williams and a host of equally undesirables who hung out with one set of common characteristics - no visible means of support, little chance of getting any, and generally hung over.

Kent Williams

John-those are some names and faces that made skydiving history in Texas. I thought it was Jessie that rode the beacon with a Thompson shooting out runway lights in Cleveland. Remember when 'Wiz' tried to get the campfire brighter with a bucket of gas from the DC-3? Or the time Boatman lost the left engine of the 3 at about 5 grand? By the time he yelled for us to get out--he was yelling at the back side of the last man.
Don
D-2785

Hey Don,
I remember Jesse shooting the machine gun at night, bouncing the tracer bullets off the runway. Man, the colors spun off in many directions. Of course, the chemicals made it look exadurated!
I will never forget the Wizzard catching himself on fire. It's a good thing he tripped so everyone could jump on him to put the fire out. He was pretty soaked. Too bad he fell down the elevator shaft on the job. He was a lot of fun.
I think we discovered that the rotating beacon was rideable at Spaceland.
I remember jumping out of the Twin Beech after the plane ran out of fuel and it crashing at Cleveland. Too bad.
What else do you remember?
John

Seems like quite a few people rode the beacon. Getting on was not the hard part .............the mushrooms made it a little more challenging though. The tracers on the runway were awesome as well as the artillery simalators.

Big Smiles Times,
Gregg

John asked me for stories about V Mills....There are so many good stories.

Someone put a student out who pulled UNDER the formation. Pete Bandy went through the student's canopy breaking his leg(s) with bones protruding through his jump suit. I seem to remember Gillespie was involved? Two jumpers went out of sight behind a hill, we all thought they had bounced. A 3rd, Gillespie maybe, pulled very low. It was a good day, no one died. I don't think the student ever came back.

A big competition weekend with some outstanding smoke. Spiderman locked himself in his VW and would crack the window, muttering about primitive tribes and rituals. Kansas showed up in a big moving van. Tommy Bullion ended up hiding in the van for a very long time. Later that night, under the stars, passing joints around the huge peagravel target...until someone lobbed a couple of cherry bombs...at which point someone freaked, yelled "incoming" and some people were diving for cover. A lot of the guys were fresh back from Viet Nam and it was understandable. No one knew about PTSS then.

good times, good memories, and good friends.

Pete lives in Austin, Tx and still walks with a limp from that jump.

What about the statue of limitations? When Gary first came to Cleveland, Carl Maroon and I were operating a student S/L progran out of Gohagen's C-172. Gary asked if he could fly the DC3 there. Sure we said. Next w/e he shows up with it and a couple of jumpers. OK lets manifest and get a load up he shouts, but Gary I've only got 4 expirenced jumpers and some s/l students, I replied! That is OK, I can't tell all the jumpers around the state that I'm flying the 3 in Cleveland if I'm not. So we load up 5 S/l studends, after a "quick" door exit briefing and about 8 other jumpers. One jump run cross wind along the runway for the students and another at 12-5 for the rest of us. All the students landed on the airport. It took aout 3 weeks for word to spread to all the RW people about the DC-3 dropping jumpers in Cleveland before we had a full load.
Don

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The V-Mills team went to the Z-Hills Turkey Meet in the early 70's ('73 or '74?) and beat all comers for the big prize. Other teams included the James Gang (Bob Federman, Jim Bohr, Pirate, etc.), the local faves (captained by Jim Hooper), and a number of other good quality teams.
Phil Mayfield - SCR 374

What's wrong with your memory, Mayfield? It was the '71 Turkey Meet where you guys smoked the Ten High Bunch into 2nd place. Here's a photo taken a couple of days after the event, when a few from the above-mentioned teams stayed to make some hot skydives.
Hoop SCR242 SCS90 NSCR26

I remember showing up at Cleveland as a very green skydiver. After jumping at Docs and Austin Paracenter it was certainly a change - no baby sitting at this DC.

The 1st time I drove up and got out of the car, I think the DZ was 1 short of a load. I was asked how many jumps I had, was I packed, and told I was going floater. I was on the plane about 5 mins after I arrived, asking the jumper next to me what is a "floater"?

After my 1st day I had made about 4 jumps and was just glad to land in open spaces and not in the woods. I also got to witness,, beer light on at noon, many "safety" meetings, tracers bouncing down the runway after dark and the Bottrell Brothers shooting fence posts in half with some sort of huge caliber rifle.

Lots of great memories there.

I remember a day where Arnie(?) The Norwegian spotted a load a bit long. He disappears for a few hours after the rest of us get back. He then shows up with a trash sack of mushrooms that immediately disappear..... It seems he was spotting himself for some mushroom prospecting. The DZ got very entertaining for the rest of that day.

It was here also I learned about Capt. Bluebottle. I was sitting in the rear of the DC-3 as we were climbing and looking up behind the door to the cockpit and seeing people clustered together. It looked like they were breathing air from a scuba regulator. I had no clue what was up and asked. Oh, that is Capt. Bluebottle. It took me awhile to figure what that was about. No wonder everyone was so happy on jump run. lol

Cleveland was great fun and I jumped there a full summer before going back to college and back to Austin Paracenter. It was gone the next summer when I was back in Houston.

A summer I will not forget. No rules skydiving, take care of yourself, pull before you bounce, this DZ ain't your mommie. I never felt unsafe there as it was my job not to be stooopid.

Today's DZs don't remember a "wild" DZ really is.


ed naylor

Hi John. Good to see you found the spot where all of the "Old Guys" have been hanging out. Great memories of Cleveland - especially the automatic weapons and mushrooms, always a fun combination.

I didn't see any mention of Wills Point, between Dallas and Shreveport. I don't think the DZ lasted long there, but was a great place.

I moved to Fla. in '77, and started jumping at DeLand, but those days at Dickenson, Spaceland, Cleveland, Wills Pt., Angleton - Jeeze, there's too many to name. There just ain't nothing like Texas Skydiving.

Kevin Keenan

Hi Don,
I'm glad for that statute of limitations. I'm just glad nobody got killed.
What I remember about the beginning of Cleveland was that Gary Lewis introduced me to Bob Geohagen, the airport manager. The only thing going on at the time was his C172 airplane training for the locals, so he wanted more activity. Harvey Stewart pushed things along by buying Gary's C180, that he later crashed, which we jumped along with the 172, and he got Dave Boatman to bring in Metro Airline's Twin Otter for a weekend. For quite a while, we waited on the White Whale, Gary's Twin Beech, that also later crashed, and Gary's DC3 to get ready. I trained students from gear I got from Boatman till you and Carl came along. I think you bought that gear. I'm glad you took over the student training, because I wasn't cut out for it. I really wasn't cut out for the dropzone management either, as you know because of all the outlaw stories. I was afraid the law might find me responsible if something bad happened. I couldn't keep myself above a grand, much less get everybody thinking safety. My one and only real safety meeting went something like this: Some California guys were in town. We were really having a good party. It looked like too much party! I called a safety meeting that noone wanted to come to. The Cessna had just taken off with Phil Mayfield and his wife, Lynn, and a couple of others for Lynn's first 10 second delay. Meanwhile down on the ground, everybody came around and Dave Boatman, group spokesman, asked me to give an example as to why I thought we needed a safety meeting. We stopped the conversation long enough to see Phil and the bunch leave the plane and make a 4 man with Lynn as her automatic opener went off along with her main. I pointed up and said, "That's why!"
John

You are right. My log shows 31 Dec 1972, two jumps out of the Metro Otter. Carl and I went back to Doc's in Dickenson untill May of 1973. when we moved back to Cleveland, C-172 and C-180 used until Aug. '73 when the DC-3 first showed up. The log reads "A whole DC-3 and only eight jumpers. I quess I need to edit some details on the last post. HA, HA, that is called a Senior Moment. The jump on 12 Aug reads-Fire Drill 4 man star with J. Mincher going through on his back. Did you get my private e-mail about the reunion?

I think it was Caddo west of DFW, watching the pilot sit in the back of Gillespie's van (I think it was Ken's) reading "Screw" magaine. A little skinny dead white complected dude, but a good pilot. He brought a twin beech out there....it was so hot the heat waves looked like water in the air..watching the pilots white ball cap bob up and dog as he JOGGED around all 3 lengths of the run way. Everyone else was trying to cop what ever shade they could find, Texas on an airstrip with no trees in the middle of summer. I flew back into Dallas with him on a sunset load, beautiful colors (somewhat chemically altered), only to have a very bad storm come in and flood the area. He wouldn't take the plane back until the next day due to the storms as he was responsible for it.
That's the plane he was piloting when he crashed with Jim Croce onboard and all on the plane died.

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Skydiving
I can’t believe there is nothing in this computer about Skydiving? This is one of my most signifigent early adulthood events about confronting fear. I was a sophomore in College (1970 UT Arlington) when Dennis Burt burst into our apartment on Cooper street. “Guess where I’m going this weekend?” He said. “Skydiving” “You mean We are” I said. That started a chain of events that culminated 6 weeks later in our first jump. First the weather was bad. Then the plane was broken. Then the pilot didn’t show up ( hung over again? ). We kept driving to Cedar Hill, Texas just south of Dallas.
Finally everything was ready at the same time. My log book shows that on 3/14/70 I made my first jump. It was out of a Cessna 180. Ben Gutierrez put me out on a static line. There was a voice in my head. It kept saying over and over “Oh my God I’m going to die” I said “Shut up you have wanted to do this for six weeks” and it said louder “Oh my God I’m going to Die!” I looked down and saw what looked like ants. They were cows. I got out on the step in the wind blast. I could hardly hear myself think for “OH MY GAWD I’M GOING TO DIE!!” screaming in my head. Then I jumped.
You fall a long ways even with a 7 foot static line to pull your parachute open. The canopy has to come out of the pack. Then the lines stretch. About 75 feet but you are looking down at thousands (3,000). Then the canopy jerks you upright and everything is quiet and blissful. There’s a couple of good minutes before the next crisis, landing. I hit in the middle of some field and did OK.
Strangely the first jump is not the worst. For me it was the third. On the first you don’t really understand what is going to happen. I mean you discuss it and study and observe but none of that is like the real thing. Lots of things happen real fast in those three seconds between jumping off the airplane step and hanging under an open canopy.
Even on the second jump it’s too fast to comprehend but by the third you have a pretty good idea of what is really going to happen.
By that time I had a good instructor an older man (probably 50) Langondon F Son. I made several jumps with him and he taught me well. It turns out that the Cedar Hill group are a sort of outlaw group with a bad reputation. Ben Gutierrez was one of the worst. A time later on I saw Ben make a low pull. He came so close that I could read the military style name tag on his jacket and see his boot laces in free fall. Then he pulled his rip chord and his canopy came out inflated but twisted. He untwisted then hit the ground 10 seconds later.
Anyway I made my required five static line jumps with Langdon and learned more about how to fly my canopy. On my sixth jump I did a short free fall and landed 100 yards from the target. I remember making my first 10 second free fall back at Cedar Hills. I could hear and feel the wind build stronger as my velocity increased. It takes 10 seconds before a human body in free fall reaches equilibrium between the weight of gravity pulling it down and wind resistance not letting it get any faster at about 120 mph called ominously enough Terminal Velocity.
Thirty seconds of freefall is a pretty standard jump. It takes 10 seconds to fall the first one thousand feet then 5 seconds for each thousand thereafter. With rip chord pull at 2,500 feet this means an exit from the airplane about 8,500 feet. I made my first 30 second delay on my 12th jump in May of 1970. We did relative work on that jump. In other words another skydiver flew up to me and we joined hands in free fall. On the next jump three of us joined together.
When school was over for the summer, I moved back to Houston and began jumping at Dickinson then Conroe and later at the Montgomery County airport. Along the way I met Pete Bandy. We made lots of junk jumps and learned a lot that summer.
By next year I had one hundred jumps and an hour cumulative time in free fall. We were chasing the elusive 8 man hook up jumping out of a twin Beechcraft at 12,000 feet over Waco, Texas.
One of the memorable jumps along the way was at a meet in Valley Mills, Texas. We competed on 4 man relative work. In other words, how fast we could make a 4 man star. We did it in less than 10 seconds. That was remarkable. I did some of the work. I went in second. That means that one person fell as base or just remained stable. I went to him then two others came in from left and right (which is harder). We did it all before reaching terminal velocity at 10 seconds or full speed. We were hot shots for a day.
My worst jump had to be when Pete got hurt. We had a put together junk load at the end of the day without a full load. Six people went up in the twin Beech at Valley Mills. One of them was a student with about 30 jumps. He borrowed a parachute from Gary Lewis. Gary kidded him telling him that it was an old parachute and would probably work. This kid got separated from the group in freefall. Normally we separate at 3,500 to open at 2,500. The kid didn’t see anybody (we were above him) and pulled at 3,500 because he was worried about that old parachute.
The rest of us had made a five man hook up. We had just broken up and were turning away when I saw a flash of color go by me. Pete hit the kid’s open canopy. At 120 mph it was like hitting concrete. He also hit the kid and it broke Pete’s leg in freefall. Pete still had to open and land with a broken leg. Meanwhile the kid is knocked unconscious with a stremering parachute. He hits another jumper. Ken Gillespie had just watched his Paracommander open with a frontal tuck (pretty typical of PC’s). The kid comes right through the opening and nails Ken’s left wrist against his reserve breaking his wrist. The kid keeps falling and spinning and falling. From above it appears several times that he must have hit the ground. He is falling about 60 mph under a torn up parachute. Suddenly he wakes up, sees where he is, pulls his reserve (without cutting away his main) and has a 10 second canopy ride to the earth. Whew! But he did have broken ribs.
Meanwhile we land and Pete lays there in the grass yelling “Help, I’ve got a broken leg.” Sure you do I say. I walk over to him and he really does have a broken leg! Half that load went to the hospital with broken bones that afternoon. Pete’s leg wasn’t set well and he walked with a limp ever since.
Well that’s depressing. Let me tell you some good stories. John Mincher and I did a water jump for our C license. It was summer in Dickinson Texas. We wore life jackets and each had a trick. John jumped his ParaCommander and landed so close to the edge of the lake that he barley got his feet wet. His good parachute landed on the shore and didn’t even get wet. I made a giant handkerchief type parachute out of a shower curtain. I flew off line and released my reserve under the rig and it floated clear of the lake and remained dry, hence did not need a repack ($30). I went for a swim.
The best jump ever occurred in Valley Mills. We loaded 30 great jumpers in the DC 3 and climbed to 13,500 feet. I was one of the last out. The hardest position. By this time I had over 200 jumps and hours in free fall. As I stood up in the aisle, I felt slightly dizzy from the altitude. Our objective was to make a large star. The world’s record at that time was 20.
The exit is one of the key points. In freefall one falls 1,000 feet in 5 seconds. This means that if I am 5 seconds behind the first person out the door, they will be 1,000 feet or almost a quarter of a mile below me when we all accelerate to terminal velocity and about 500 feet behind because of the forward motion of the airplane. So we practice getting all 30 people out the door in 5 seconds. For me this means jumping 10 feet before I get to the door with 3 people still in the way just figuring that they will all have a clean exit(not bump the edge or slow down) and leaving the door already diving head down.
Immediately after the exit, you pass through some rough air from the airplane but you try not to alter your head down position very much because it will slow you down. The wind noise grows until it is screaming at 200 mph. You have to watch everybody else. At these velocities people have been killed in free fall collisions.
I don’t dive right at the forming star knowing that as I flare there will be lots of forward throw. The wind tries to pull my arms off as I come out of the dive. The forward throw has me closing on the star at up to 80 mph horizontally now. The star does not stay still. It floats up and down and breaths in and out and slides sideways. Six or eight jumpers are making simultaneous approaches. I have to watch them too. If one gets under me, his burble will cut off my air and I will fall on him. I bide my time. My job is to come in last. As I get near I can see that the other side is in danger of breaking up. The star slides under me and suddenly I am coming straight down right between two jumpers. The hardest approach you can make with a burble on each side.
Usually you grab two jumpers arms, shake, then they let go and you are in. Today with the star breaking up I punch in, slam into the arms and break them open in one motion. I look right and left. I am sandwiched between two of my mentors, Curran Phillips and Phil Mayfield. The 18 man star holds the required 5 seconds. We break at 3,500 feet track away from each other and the thunder of 30 parachutes opening rumbles through the air. That’s a good day.
Stephen hazen

So sometimes we would play this game of Chicken. Gary would fly the Twin Beech real low and buzz jumpers as they walked back to the DZ. I rode copilot with him one time. We flew 4 feet off the ground at 200 MPH and had to go up to clear a barb wire fence.
I swear, all this bullshit is True! I was there. I lived in a small (4x6) tent on the DZ during the summer of '71. My clothes closet was a wrecked C-180. The doors still locked. I taught people how to sky dive (about 6, made $300 all summer) helped around the field and got FREE jumps all summer. I had two rigs so I could hit the ground and make the next load. My log book shows 5 jumps some days.
One day I put this student from the Rotary club out, then followed him out the door. As he got close to the ground ( I was 200 feet above and behind him) I yelled "Turn into the wind and put your feet together" He couldn't see any body and was scared shitless anyway. He thought it was the voice of GAWD talking to him.
I'm surprised any of us lived through it. We used to play with dynamite. Our official excuse was that we were digging a swimming pool in limestone bedrock. One day someone took a nap on the pea gravel target. We snuck out there with a half stick of dynamite. Kathump. He looked up briefly, rolled over and went back to sleep.
It was real quiet around there on weekdays. Nice to recover from the crazy weekends. Nobody knew the meaning of "Statutory" back then. Girls from town would come out for the party. Do you remember Cricket? She must have been at least 16. We would follow cars down the dirt roads with our lights out when they went to the creek to make out.
We would use the town tractor to mow the 640 acre L shaped section. I almost ran over somebody one day. I was driving it out from town and he stopped to talk. I thought the tractor was in neutral and let the clutch out. It jumped a foot. He was standing right in front of the wheel and he jumped 3 feet. I slammed the clutch in real fast.
I helped Gary change spark plugs on the Beech one day using only a pair of pliers. We flew to Poto, Oklahoma in the DC-3 for Nationals in '72. On Saturday night every one was doing Acid. We walked around in the dark making beeping sounds doing make believe relative work by echo location. The next day we couldn't find the pilot. Gary had a paying gig in Talequah so he flew and put me in the right seat (still tripping'). "Now if we have to feather an engine, hit that red button up there. Call off the airspeed and pull up the gear when I tell you to. Ready?" Sure. So when we get there, we're going to make a jump on the way in. I go back to suit up and there are women, kids and dogs walking around in the isle with no door on the plane. So I follow some people out the door but I haven't even see the ground in a few minutes. I'm thinking " I hope there's an airport down there. Hell I just hope we're not over water." It went fine.
We flew the DC-3 to Cozumel. I flew it at night over the Gulf (who needs a stinking license). The oil rigs looked real pretty going by.
In Whaco (Waco - V Mills) we ran out of gas one time in the Beech. We were up to 4,000 feet and it got real quiet when both engines quit. Gary went up front and consulted briefly with the pilot. Then he walked all the way to the back of the airplane before yelling "Get out". He was the first one out. We actually got some RW on the way down. When we landed in a field, I didn't even know which way to start walking but somebody saw it from the field and picked us up. The plane made it back.
Would I lie to you?
Stephen Hazen