Skydivers killed in Missouri plane crash found thrills and peace through jumping

A skydiving instructor who had made over 6,800 jumps. A drummer who was meticulous about safety since falling in love with the sport that helped him sober up. A software engineer on the cusp of becoming a certified skydiving coach. A grandfather honoring his sister lost to cancer.

Family and friends of the 11 jumpers and pilot killed when their plane crashed shortly after taking off in Missouri said they loved their hobby — whether it was to find personal peace or to share a once-in-a-lifetime experience with others. They remembered the experienced skydivers as people who may have had regular jobs to pay their bills but free falling brought both the thrill and the serenity they craved.

Blake Thacker, 25, jumped for seven years since first skydiving on his 18th birthday. He was set to get his skydiving coach certification over the weekend, his mother Sherry said.

“Skydiving had given him the confidence to do other things in his life, to be successful and reach for things maybe he thought he wasn’t good enough to do," she said.

Thacker was an aviation software engineer and his mother saw that same methodical safety-oriented focus in his hobby.

“He said, ’Mom the danger in skydiving is really not the diving it’s the plane,'” she recalled.

Plane crashed shortly after takeoff

The plane was barely off the ground Sunday — only about 100 feet (30 meters) in the air — when it made an abrupt left turn before crashing on a sunny day. It appeared to be losing power, witnesses said.

Skydive Kansas City operated the single-engine turboprop Pacific Aerospace 750XL built in 2010 out of an airport in the small town of Butler, roughly 65 miles (105 kilometers) south of Kansas City.

The plane arrived in Butler for the first time on June 5, according to data from FlightRadar24.com. Pictures of the aircraft posted on social media showed it still had advertising from Chattanooga Skydiving Co. Its flight history showed it had previously been flying for weeks at a time in Tennessee and Wisconsin.

A woman who answered the phone at the Chattanooga Skydiving Co. hung up Tuesday when a reporter identified himself.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating all factors leading to the crash including how much experience the pilot had with this model of plane and any mechanical or structural problems with the aircraft.

The 12 people killed were identified as Thacker, Kurt John Roy, Michael Shanahan, David Hershberger, Sai Karthik Varma Datla, Matthew Swope, Dustin McKinney, Jen Sharp, Marcus Miller, Nicholas Nash, William Fischer and Dane Cordes, according to the Bates County Coroner's Office.

Skydiving helped one jumper get sober

McKinney’s wife said her husband was meticulous about safety when he jumped after his love for skydiving prompted him to get sober seven years ago.

“It feels like this is the only way that skydiving could have taken out Dustin, because it was such a freak accident,” Kathryn Nold said. “It was the most horrific thing. It’s still very surreal.”

McKinney, 44, worked at a furniture store and played drums in Kansas City-area bands. The father of two also had a part-time paying gig as a videographer for Skydive Kansas City.

“He could just immediately make people feel seen and warm and want to be around him, and I just feel infinitely lucky that we were the center of his world and able to experience that love from him that he gave so effortlessly to everyone,” Nold said of her high school sweetheart.

Honoring his sister by jumping

Shanahan took up skydiving just before his older sister Nikki died from breast cancer in 2016, his mother said Tuesday.

“He wanted to live his life and make it worth having fun, having a good time, doing something he enjoyed, and skydiving was something he had always wanted to do, unbeknownst to us,” Gloria Shanahan told The Associated Press.

Shanahan honored his sister by skydiving on her birthday, Mother’s Day and the anniversary of her death. He then visited her grave.

Shanahan, 54, jumped Saturday just for fun. He booked Sunday's jump as a backup in case the weather was bad but decided to go ahead and jump both days anyway, his mother said.

“We do not regret that he did. He got to live the life that he wanted to,” she said.

Shanahan's skydiving instructor was Hershberger, who was on the plane with him Sunday. The two had another bond. Hershberger taught violin to two of Shanahan’s grandchildren.

Hershberger, 54, also taught orchestra and played trumpet with the Kansas City Wind Symphony. His summers were spent at Skydive Kansas City, often harnessed to inexperienced jumpers exhilarated and nervous to cross something off their bucket lists.

Skydiving to find out more about yourself

Sharp, 55, took her first jump in 1989 when she was 18. Some 6,800 jumps later, she was a legendary instructor at the highest levels of the sport and the coach for Thacker's certification.

On her blog, Sharp wrote about how she jumped into Denver’s Coors Field ballpark while dressed as the queen of England and loved to go tandem with people skydiving for the first time and to see them test their resolve, grow personally and just feel alive.

“Being trained by Jen Sharp was like taking piano lessons from Beethoven,” her friend Greg Upper told The Associated Press, calling Sharp a philosopher. “That’s how big of a deal she was."

Swope, 39, worked in IT, but every weekend he was up in the sky as he searched for any bit of fun, especially something he could share with others, his best friend, Justin Williams, said.

“He loved it. He gets to take people on their once-in-a-lifetime adventure every weekend, multiple times a day,” Williams said.

After Swope's death, Williams said, he’s terrified to go skydiving again but also knows he has to because his friend knew to truly live is to take risks.

“It’s scary to be in the door, but the moment you let go, it dissolves away and induces a state of presence that you will not find anywhere else," Williams said of free falling. "You don’t worry about the future. You’re not sad about the past. You’re just present, and it’s the most peaceful experience.”

The skydiving industry says it has a strong safety record. The United States Parachute Association said that last year nearly 3.5 million jumps were completed and that 16 civilians died, the majority from human error.

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Associated Press reporters Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska; Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.