As Ivan McGuire boarded the small airplane with his video camera, the experienced skydiver didn’t know this would be his final ever flight.
Ivan worked as a cameraman filming nervous student parachuters taking their first-ever jump. He’d made hundreds of these flights, and so any fear of leaping from a moving object three thousand metres above the ground had left Ivan long ago.
On April 5th, 1988 Ivan McGuire jumped from a plane with his heavy VHS recording deck strapped to his back and a camera mounted to his helmet. Ivan had already completed two of these filming jumps that day, so he was a little fatigued – which may account for his soon-to-be-discovered forgetfulness.
On this final scheduled jump for the day Ivan calmly filmed the student strapped to their instructor as they both free-fell and then opened their combined parachute. Ivan instinctively reached around to open his parachute…. and discovered he’d forgotten to put one on.
How had an experienced sky-diver forgotten to put on his parachute? Well, we don’t know for certain. Perhaps it was simply tiredness after a busy day of jumping, or maybe he’d mistaken the video pack on his back as his usual parachute. We can only imagine what might have gone through Ivan’s mind as he plummeted to Earth from ten thousand feet with nothing to save him.
The salvaged video footage recorded from his helmet shows Ivan going from matter-of-fact calmness to understandable panic.
It seems Ivan McGuire – on the day of his death – had simply gone-through-the-motions of his normal daily routines, without ensuring he had one very important thing with him. His parachute!
I’m hoping you can you forgive me as a minister of religion for likening this story to a spiritual cautionary tale. Yes, we do need to live each day as if it might be our last, BUT… we also need to be double-checking every day the faith we have in a loving Creator. Our faith in a Saviour is our ‘saving parachute’.
For those reading this story who have already recognised God in their life – the Bible tells us: “Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (check out Joshua 1:9). This biblical promise is a daily ‘parachute of faith’ allowing each of us to land safely whenever we fall.
Click here to view Ivan McGuire’s helmet video of his final jump
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About this blog: Pastor David Riley is a minister of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and lives in Australia. This article is from his “Reverential Ramblings” series – which you can subscribe to by clicking “follow” on this website.
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The audio is described elsewhere and poor Ivan’s “Oh, God! No!” is as haunting as Kevin Cosgrove similar exclamation on the phone to the 911 operator as WTC2 (the South Tower) collapses.
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