Head Over Heels

A land mine may have taken both of Jay Humphries’ legs and his left eye, but it didn’t claim his wings.

The 37-year-old Army vet still takes to the skies — prosthesis and all — to pursue what he calls his “pure exhilaration.”

“Regardless of how much hell you go through, just that feeling of when the [airplane] door opens and you feel that rush of air as you leap out into space — that feeling is like an instant addiction,” gushes the Bremerton, Wash., resident, who now has more than 2,500 skydiving jumps to his credit.

“Experiencing free fall for a full minute — it’s indescribable,” he says. “It just filled a void in my life.”

A thrill-seeker since birth, Humphries had always enjoyed the rush he received when skydiving, mountain biking or skiing. But, when the mine took his left leg below the knee, his right leg above the knee and his left eye, the former adrenaline junkie found himself struggling for his former independence and freedom.

He decided to take matters into his own hands.

“Six to eight months after I was injured I started full-blown with the rehab products,” Humphries recalls. “At the time, the Walter Reed Army Hospital was not set up, so I was really frustrated with what was available back then. My frustration drove me to become a mechanical engineer. Now I design and test prosthetics for TruLife.”

Since beginning with TruLife in 2001, Humphries has been using his personal experiences to drive his work ethic. It’sthe same approach he took with his rehab: accomplishment through hard work and perseverance. It took him years, but eventually Humphries was able not only to walk with his prosthesis but also to bike and, most important, skydive.

Such was his desire that, for his first few years, Humphries averaged 300 to 400 jumps per year. His diligence landed him a spot with Pieces of 8, an all-amputee skydiving group, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t face a few obstacles along the way.

“When I first started jumping, I’d tie [my prosthesis] down and to my belt loops just to make sure that if my main suspension failed I wouldn’t lose anything,” Humphries explains. “But at one point I got complacent because things were working so well for so long. I took things for granted and didn’t inspect my prothesis to see if anything was loose. All of a sudden during a free fall, my left leg fell off! Luckily I had spares,” he laughs.

Turns out the spares weren’t necessary though. It seems Humphries’ fellow flyers were eager to lend a hand.

“They took out a dunebuggy and they scoured the area. Sure enough, about an hour later, one of the kids came back on a motorcycle holding [my leg] up like a trophy. Amazingly, it was unharmed. I made three more jumps that day with it.”

Like Humphries, fellow Pieces of 8 member Keith Ragusa takes a positive approach when talking about his prosthesis. Sure, the 43 year-old Seattle resident was devastated when, in 1988, a mine in the Sinai Peninsula destroyed his vehicle and his left leg, but Ragusa was not about to let the trauma overtake his spirit.

“Anybody who goes through a traumatic incident [like] when people lose a limb, a lot of times the first reaction is ‘Oh! My life is over!’ Well, that’s a bad assumption. It’s unfortunate and it’s just not true.”

Always active, Ragusa overcame his injury and now enjoys racquetball, snowboarding, competitive sailing and, of course, skydiving. He currently has between 2,000 and 3,000 jumps to his credit, many of those being competitive four-way jumps, his personal favorite. In addition to his many dives, Ragusa has also worked to achieve his helicopter pilot’s license, and is currently contemplating scuba diving.

His only concern?

“As an amputee, you always have weight and torque issues,” he laughs.

To tackle the torque and ensure a good flight, Ragusa said he only needs moderate accommodations.

“The only consideration for skydiving is that I have a very small lanyard, which I tie around my waist and then down to my shoelace to make sure that, even if I lose the fit, I don’t lose the limb,” he says.

Between the open air, the challenge of competition and the camaraderie, both Ragusa and Humphries avow that skydiving has offered them a means to reclaim their former, active lives. And they are not alone; according to Ragusa, the trend of “active despite disability” is on the rise.

“This [prosthesis] doesn’t define me. It’s an inconvenience,” explains Ragusa, who also has some advice for the HME industry.

“The point about [the disabled] — they’re not geriatrics. They are still active. The market is going to have to adapt to that,” Ragusa says.

“Some of these people want to do everything they have ever done. The trick is going to be ‘How do we meet that market?’ For everybody, it’s about not settling.”

With activity on the rise, Pieces of 8 has grown to include more than 30 members from the United States, Russia, Israel, Australia and the Netherlands. And, according to Humphries, “quite a few” drop zones have begun to offer skydiving programs for paraplegics and quadriplegics.

And why not? After all, as Humphries put it: “This is a sport that is mostly mental, not physical.”