Sky diver jumps for the cause

Flying, floating, falling. Sky diving isn’t quite any of those words while it is all of them.

When Spangle resident Pat Menke jumps from an airplane and drops toward the earth, she said her life drops away. Each fiber is focused on the moment because sky diving completely captivates her – mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

But when you add a throng of other experienced women sky divers, a good cause and a world record, the sport has even greater meaning.

On Sept. 26, Menke and 180 others broke the women’s formation sky diving world record while raising almost $1 million for breast cancer research. The event, Jump for the Cause, donated proceeds to City of Hope, a cancer care and research center in California.

“I always liked carnival rides, the ones that go upside down,” said Menke, 50, when asked why she started the sport in 1988. She’s been jumping ever since. While it is an addictive adrenaline rush, she said she continues to sky dive because it gets her out of her head. “I’m not trying to figure things out any more, I am just doing it. It is a soul challenge of conquering fear. It feels good. It encompasses your whole being. It puts everything out of your mind.”

Since that first summer, Menke has logged more than 2,100 jumps and participated in six women’s formation sky diving world records. She and her husband own West Plains Skydiving in Ritzville, Wash., so six months a year she jumps every weekend, frequently with a camera mounted on her helmet to film students.

Sky diving, said Menke, is normally a personal sport but Jump for the Cause is an unforgettable experience of teamwork. “The camaraderie is amazing. Having women from so many different places, not competing, but encouraging each other – there is an atmosphere and energy that is infectious.”

The event in Perris Valley, Calif., drew women from 31 countries. The women that docked on Menke in the formation were from Venezuela, Italy and Japan.

Of course, getting 181 women to drop from the sky in formation takes more than one jump. It took a week of jumps, video critiques, practice and pep talks before they were ready to put it all together.

Nine planes, each holding 20 women, flew in a V formation to 17,000 feet. The sky divers put on oxygen at 12,000 feet, keeping it on until just before jumping. Menke, a floater, jumped right after the first group. Based on her small size and skills, she had an exterior spot on the wheel-like formation. For about a minute, with arms and legs extended and bent at right angles, she watched and waited for her turn to dock with the group.

On video, the formation looks like a brightly hued pinwheel falling from the sky. Sections of women in pink, the recognized color of breast cancer awareness, connect like spokes to lines of women in yellow, white and blue. They needed different colored jumpsuits so they could spot and get into position quickly and safely.

“Everybody knows their job and is doing it at the same time,” said Menke, adding that their weeklong mantra was, “right now, right here, this jump, my personal best.”

After grasping each other long enough to get a picture, at 7,500 feet, the pinwheel broke apart, stretching and growing as the women sped away from each other so they could deploy their parachutes and land safely. As part of the carefully orchestrated plan, Menke didn’t open her chute until 2,500 feet.

“Wanting to break a record and doing it for a bigger purpose,” she said, makes the experience extra special. “I love to jump. But to do something you enjoy that can make a positive impact on something, not just for self-satisfaction … it’s what can you give back rather than what can you get.”

After an event like Jump for the Cause, Menke said organizers warned that participants might get the “pink blues”, a let-down after returning to normal life. After all that training and fundraising and effort, participants often wonder, “now what?”

Menke has gotten those pink blues, she said, but not this year. Instead, she wants to use her world-record jumps as a launching pad to impact more people, perhaps by sharing the life lessons she’s learned from sky diving. “This is part of the rest of it.”