When Carol lost her mother Betty eight years ago, she vowed to honor her in a most uplifting way, by jumping out of an airplane.
Betty set the precedent for the skydiving tribute by jumping out of an airplane for her 70th birthday. The great-grandma of 12 celebrated other milestones by learning how to ski when she turned 40, parasailing when she turned 50 and biking down a volcano when she turned 60.
The youngest of Betty Fischer’s five children, Carol shares her mother’s brown eyes, love of gardening and cool sense of adventure.
“I didn’t really think of anything but doing it,” Carol said. “It wasn’t scary. It was more the feeling of, ‘Wow! I’m really going to do this!’”
As she trained for the big leap, Carol faced a few doubters.
“My doctor even told me it didn’t make sense to step out of a perfectly good airplane,” she said. “But, it was for Mom. Mom did it so it made sense to me.”
Once she set the date and made an appointment for her tandem jump, Carol only grew more determined. She looks serene in the photos as she learns how to hold herself in the air, buckles into the harness and flies up to the dropoff point.
She said she didn’t have any second thoughts as she got ready to jump from the plane, and that she enjoyed every moment of her float to the ground.
Throughout the whole experience, she thought of her mom, who had the best vantage point to cheer her on.
“I remembered the video of my mom’s jump and I was thinking, ‘I wonder if my cheeks are flapping like Mom’s cheeks flapped,’” she said. “And I know I was smiling really big. I remembered her smile too and I thought, ‘That’s why her smile was so big!’ It’s just an amazing experience.”
