There was one moment — just one moment— when Lila Rockwell second-guessed her decision to jump out of a perfectly good airplane at 14,000 feet. And by then, it was too late to change her mind.
The 101-year-old Fort Myers woman was already falling through the air high above Clewiston.
The ground rushed toward Rockwell and her tandem skydiving instructor. The wind battered her face and jumpsuit.
And that’s when the doubt crept in, mere seconds after they’d slid out the airplane door into the big, blue Florida sky.
“We were in freefall,” Rockwell says. “And I thought, ‘Lila, what in the heck are you doing?'”
Then her parachute opened, and she left that doubt behind her.
Rockwell just fell. And fell.
And the great-great grandmother loved every second of it.
“It was a thrill!” Rockwell says days later, back on solid ground in the living room of her south Fort Myers mobile home. “It was quite a ride.”
A lifelong daredevil takes the plunge
It’s a ride she’s been wanting to take for about 35 years. The retired assistant bank manager from Grand Rapids, Michigan, has flown in a hot-air balloon before. And at age 85, she climbed a rock wall with her great granddaughter.