Word: wasik
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...first jump was perfect, though she laughed about landing in a mud puddle. The second time up, last August, she left the plane in a bad body position-back arched toward the ground. Rickie became entangled in her main chute lines, her reserve chute snarled and, as John Wasik watched from the ground, she fell to her death...
...Though Wasik had always been known as a brooding loner, he seemed to develop a new morbidity. "I feel like now I'm marking time until I join her," he told a friend. To another he said: "I killed her." For $4,400, he bought from a used-car dealer the supercharged Corvette that once belonged to Astronaut Gus Grissom, careened it along Florida roads at up to 135 m.p.h...
Acquaintances recalled Wasik's traumatic reaction to the deaths of Astronauts Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee in the Apollo fire last January. Wasik wept, slashed his wrists, and at one point drove around Cape Kennedy pointing a pistol at his head...
Suit for Burial. The Falling Stars' safety director grounded Wasik temporarily after Rickie's death. But soon he was jumping again. Last week he boarded the club's Cessna 182, the same plane from which his wife had plummeted. At 3,200 ft., he hesitated, then stepped into space. He rolled on his back, then indolently onto his stomach. In seconds, the horrified jumpmaster realized that Wasik had no intention of opening his parachute...
...apologizing to the club and detailing burial instructions. At his apartment in the town of Cape Canaveral, a newly pressed suit was laid on the bed for the burial. Two days later his body was buried beside Rickie's in a silver casket that he had selected himself. Wasik had hoped to be buried on his first wedding anniversary, but a county-ordered autopsy delayed the drama...