He has a need for speed!
**********************************************************
Former President Bush Sky Dives for 80th Birthday
Sun Jun 13, 2004 03:42 PM ET
By Jon Herskovitz
COLLEGE STATION, Texas (Reuters) - Former U.S. President George Bush on Sunday celebrated his 80th birthday by donning a black and yellow jump suit and skydiving strapped to a U.S. Army paratrooper.
An airborne Bush waved to the thousands who had gathered for the event as he neared touchdown; and then he slid to a landing across the hot Texas grass near his presidential library.
Bush had planned to jump solo, as he did for his 75th birthday, but tricky winds and low clouds caused him to jump in tandem for safety reasons.
"This was a day of joy and wonder for the Bush family, and certainly for the old guy," the octogenarian former president said.
He was flanked on the ground by members of the U.S. Army's Golden Knights parachute team, who took the jump with him. Bush dropped at about 120 miles per hour (200 kph) after jumping from about 13,000 feet before his chute was opened.
Bush said he wanted to send a message to senior citizens to get out and be active. He was presented with a badge after the event saying that he had completed five jumps, enough to qualify for U.S. Army basic paratroop status.
The first time Bush jumped out of an airplane was when he was a U.S. aviator shot down over the Pacific during World War II, some 60 years ago.
The senior Bush was in Texas for two-days of festivities and fanfare to celebrate his 80th birthday.
On Saturday, Bush was at the baseball park in Houston with his son, President Bush and former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.
The Bush faithful, who paid at least $200 each and some as much as $1 million to take part in the charity event, then moved by train about 100 miles west to the Texas A&M University campus at College Station to watch Bush parachute.
The organizers of the event did not want to delay the Bush birthday celebration, though it started hours after the funeral for Reagan, for whom Bush served as vice president.
"Given the charitable nature of these events, we believe President Reagan would be the first to say 'the show must go on,"' said spokesman Jim McGrath.
The money from the two-day birthday bash was being used to benefit three charities -- the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the Points of Light Foundation.
reuters.com |
