Great Grandmother Skydives in Maine on Mother’s Day
While grandmothers across New England enjoyed yesterday’s beautiful weather via a Sunday drive or a walk in the park, Marjorie Bell, 80, decided a freefall from an airplane, followed by a scenic parachute flight over Central Maine was more her speed.
Bell, a great-grandmother and mother of seven, celebrated Mother’s Day — also the day after her 80th birthday — by skydiving. And a few of those grandchildren, as well as her daughter and son-in-law, agreed to jump with her.
“I’ve never felt so free,’’ Bell told the Morning Sentinel minutes after parachuting to the ground.
Here is a photo of Bell and daughter Helen Bell-Necevski getting their harnesses on, posted on Twitter by Jesse Scardina, a reporter for the Morning Sentinel, who tweeted the event using the hashtag #GrandmaSkyDive.
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[fragment number=2][fragment number=3][fragment number=4]And here is Bell and her daughter in the air, just “two specs in the sky,’’ as Scardina put it:
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Bell has dreamed of skydiving for the past 18 years, ever since she witnessed skydivers during a trip to Lake Wales in Florida, she told the Morning Sentinel. She decided it was finally time to check the dream off her bucket list and found a way to do it through the Pittsfield-based Vacationland Skydiving. The event took place at the Robert LaFleur Municipal Airport in Waterville while dozens of family members waited on the ground with champagne.
How will Bell top that for her 81st? By zip-lining over Grand Falls, of course. That’s her plan for next year’s birthday, she told the crowd.
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