LOGANSPORT, Ind. (AP) - Ruth Blair isn’t your typical 89-year-old. She’s a daredevil.
When the Peru native isn’t riding on her nephew’s motorcycle or flying in an open cockpit biplane, she’s skydiving from 10,000 feet up - all with a carefree attitude and lots of humor.
“She’s just doing whatever she wants to do,” her daughter, Joleen Sutton, said.
Blair is also blind, but Sutton said that’s never held her back from adventure.
On Saturday, June 24, Blair skydived for the first time, fulfilling a lifelong dream. She’s a resident at Blair Ridge Health Campus in Peru (no relation to her surname). The senior living community’s parent company, Trilogy Health Services, has a “Live A Dream” program, where staff identify and grant wishes to residents, according to Erin Murphy, life enrichment director.
“Big or small, we try to grant them all,” Murphy said.
The campus coordinated the tandem jump for Saturday morning with Air Indiana Skydiving Center, based at the Logansport/Cass County Airport, where more than 30 family, friends and Blair Ridge residents joined Blair. She greeted almost everyone with hugs and laughs.
“I just can’t believe the people who came out to support me,” she said.
Blair’s nephew, Rick Blair, also decided to skydive on Saturday. After getting trained, the two, along with Air Indiana employees, squeezed into the plane for the about 15-minute trek up to 10,000 feet in the sky. Ruth Blair said not much went through her head right before the jump.
“I just thought, this is it. I’m going, finally, I’m going to get to go,” she said. “It was wonderful.”
At the start of the 30-second drop, Rick Blair and Ruth Blair said the air felt like an initial dive into a pool, a blast of pressure on impact.
“It kind of took my breath away, but I took several deep breaths and I was fine,” she said.
George Capitanio, owner of Air Indiana, assisted Ruth Blair on the tandem jump. Capitanio, who’s done almost 2,500 tandems and more than 6,500 skydives, said he’s taken 80-something-year-olds on jumps before, as well as paralyzed and deaf persons.
Blair said many years ago she had talked about going skydiving with her husband Jim, who passed away last year, but he thought it was “silly,” Blair recalled, and she decided to drop the subject. Sutton said her mom grew up with a twin brother and an older brother, so she had always been a “tomboy” and had a desire to take risks.
After Jim died last April, Blair moved to the health campus in Peru. Sutton said when her mom called her some time ago about the skydive, she wasn’t sure how her daughter would react.
“You’re 89 years old, you don’t need anybody’s permission,” Sutton remembers telling her. “You do what you want to do.”
And she’s done just that. A few weekends ago, Blair rode in an open cockpit 1929 biplane at the Peru Municipal Airport. Next, she’s planning to go in a hot air balloon.
“I love it,” she said. “I just love it, quite an experience.”
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Source: (Logansport) Pharos-Tribune, https://bit.ly/2rXYeSV
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Information from: Pharos-Tribune, https://www.pharostribune.com
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