As a child, J.T. Hill would urge his father to rush the family home from church each week so he could watch his favorite television program,
”Ripcord.”
The adventures of the fictional skydiving, crime-fighting pair of the early 1960s inspired Hill to learn to jump.
Today, Hill has more than 1,500 jumps to his credit and is the captain and founder of the Liberty Parachute Team.
”I love the excitement and the feeling of freedom,” says Hill, 45.
”When you`re in the air, you can do almost anything a plane can do: You can dive, go straight across the sky, speed up and slow down-everything except climb.”
During a typical six-minute program, four of Liberty`s eight skydivers fill the sky with bursts of color and smoke.
In midair, they unfurl a series of American flags, including the 2,000-square-foot ”Mega-Glory,” which requires eight people to catch it before it lands.
The teama`s signature maneuver is the ”Giant Candy Canes of Fire,” in which divers launch multiple spirals of red and white smoke.
Carrying up to 120 pounds of parachute, flags and other equipment, the skydivers leap from an airplane speeding about 100 m.p.h. and at altitudes from 2,000 to 5,500 feet.
”What I try to do is put on a three-ring circus in the sky,” Hill says. ”We want there to be lots of things for people to look at.”
Hill made his first jump in 1970 and a year later earned his teaching certification and began performing solo. In 1984, he founded Liberty from among friends he made at a skydiving club near his hometown of Galesburg, Ill. The team debuted that year as the opening act at the Experimental Aircraft Association Convention in Oshkosh, Wis., and since has appeared at air shows and other events across the country.
In 1988, for the opening ceremonies of the Florida State Lottery, Hill was the first person allowed to jump into the Orange Bowl in Miami. About 35,000 people were in the stands.
Hill says the event was exciting because it was his first professional night jump-and because of what happened about a third of the way to the ground:
He was wearing a radio headset so he could communicate with the ground. Suddenly, he heard a thunderous roar, which he thought was a jet. ”I was so scared I was going to get run over I forgot to pull (detonate) one of my flares.” However, he couldn`t see any planes in the air.
Once he got closer to the ground, he realized the emcee was leading the crowd in yelling, ”Hello, J.T.!”
”It was actually an easy jump, but (that) really scared me at first,”
he says.
Members of the team appearing this Saturday and Sunday are Hill, of Galesburg; Dick Hofer of Princeville, Ill.; Jim Twardowski of Santee, Calif.; and Jim Wegrzyn of McNabb, Ill.
Two of the team wives, Sharon Hill and Margie Wegrzyn, form the ground crew. Their duties include packing, unpacking and cleaning the flags and equipment used for the show; organizing volunteer flag catchers; and making arrangements for a pickup crew for the team.
Sharon Hill, 40, says she prefers her husband not to jump out of airplanes but lends her support anyway.
”I don`t jump, and I wish J.T. didn`t. But he loves performing and was doing it before we got married,” she says. ”If he is going to stay with it, I want him to be as professional as he can. What can be better than doing something you love and getting paid for it?”
Away from the crowds of spectators, J.T. Hill is a brakeman for the Burlington Northern Railroad, and Sharon is an elementary school teacher. They have three children: Katie, 14, Becky, 10, and Joshua, 8.
”The kids are so used to it, they are blase about it,” Sharon Hill says. ”They have seen their dad jump out of an airplane so many times it isn`t a big deal.
”We`re all pretty comfortable with it today. It has given us the opportunity to meet really nice people and travel to areas we might not have gotten to before.”
Neither Hill is fearful of the possible consequences of a mishap. A stringent routine of precautionary procedures and a watchful eye on the weather, which is unpredictable, help to assure the safety of the skydivers.
