Parachute

Talk about a cursed award.Two years ago, Florence Parlett died a few weeks before the Maryland Aviation Administration could give her its Pioneer Award for founding Lee Airport in Edgewater.Last week, Aubrey Patterson nearly followed Parlett's footsteps. The longtime parachute packer had a heart attack just before the awards ceremony and was unable to attend.However, the 81-year-old Glen Burnie resident quickly recovered and spent yesterday afternoon retrieving two more parachutes to be inspected and repacked.

Braves: Andruw Jones stole a career-high three bases.Cubs: Gary Gaetti's grand slam was his first homer at Turner Field. He has homered in 34 different ballparks. The only parks he hasn't hit homers are in Phoenix and Tampa Bay. Jeff Blauser's homer was his first since last Aug. 14.Marlins: Reliever Vic Darensbourg leads the NL with 24 appearances. Before the game, the team conducted a Salute to Black Legends of American History that included 20 former Negro leagues players as well as groups representing the Tuskegee Airmen, Buffalo Soldiers and Triple Nickel Parachute Infantry.

"WE MADE IT as big as possible," said Rob Lamdin, father of Alyssa Lamdin, the third-grade student whose enormous parachute took a record-breaking 6.07 seconds to descend from the roof of Spring Garden Elementary School.The homework project took three hours for Alyssa and her father, who attached eight strands of fishing line between a Styrofoam cup and an ultra-lightweight plastic trash bag."We tested it from our second-floor window," he said.Last week the Lamdins, including Alyssa's mother, Rachel, were among the 38 parents and siblings who gathered on the school lawn, craning their necks to check out the descent of parachutes made by Alyssa and her classmates.

SEATTLE -- A veneer of wax on the bodies of pioneer beetles resisted the drying power of ash that in a searing landscape like Mount St. Helens' can spell quick death for less hardy insects.The carabid's small size made it easy for the scavenging beetle to dart under pumice pebbles to escape the sun.Other post-eruption pioneers -- who became beetle food -- came in via parachute, riding the wind for miles to enter the mountain's barren waste land.As new vegetation began to take hold, the insect Adams and Eves mysteriously died.

Jerry Loftis, 29, a Californian who helped pioneer sky surfing, was killed Friday when his parachute failed to deploy during a sky dive in Quincy, Ill. He was sky surfing at the World Free Fall Convention when his parachute malfunctioned at 16,000 feet, said Adams County coroner Gary Hamilton.Joel Barr, 82, an electronics engineer linked to executive spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who defected to the Soviet bloc in 1950 and became a leading force in the Kremlin's computer industry, died Aug. 1 in a Moscow hospital.

SHYMKENT, Kazakstan -- While Americans slept early yesterday, hundreds of paratroopers from the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, led by a four-star Marine general, dropped into this remote but potentially critical part of the world almost 8,000 miles from their base in North Carolina.The U.S. airborne troops' landing on this dusty stretch of Central Asia yesterday marked the first military exercise ever with Russia and troops of former Soviet republics.Five hundred troops from the 82nd Airborne Division joined 40 members of the Central Asian Battalion -- made up of forces from, Kazakstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan -- in the paratroop drop to begin a six-day training exercise to prepare for future peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.

A Maryland National Guard paratrooper was killed Friday night while making a practice jump at a baseball stadium in Delaware before the home opener for the Wilmington Blue Rocks minor league baseball team.Master Sgt. David C. Horan Sr., 50, of Kent Island, was killed about 4 p.m. when he got tangled in a cable and fell about 90 feet, hitting a fence outside the stadium, said Capt. Drew Sullins, a National Guard spokesman. Horan was pronounced dead at Christiana Hospital in Delaware.The parachute program scheduled to take place during opening day ceremonies for the Kansas City Royals farm team was canceled, but the game was played.

David LeVan, chairman of Conrail, will not get to lead one of the largest railroads in the United States, as he once planned.But he will get a $22 million golden parachute if federal regulators approve a proposed deal to split Conrail between CSX Corp. and Norfolk Southern Corp., a person close to the negotiations said.In what appears to be one of the more generous severance packages for outgoing management in the rapidly shrinking railroad industry, LeVan is to receive more than 40 times the $539,278 in salary and bonuses he received at Conrail in 1995.

Even pastors get canned.So, pastor Richard Nelson Bolles self-published a book in 1970 to help other ministers looking for work. He paid the first-class postage to mail his 162-sheet, spiral-bound, job manual. His California friends thought the title was a hoot, although no one knew what it meant then or now.What color is your parachute? What color is what? Never mind. Mr. Bolles' "What Color is Your Parachute?" has sold more than 5 million copies (24,000 a month) and has been a chronic best seller for 25 years.