Word: wasik
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When he was not covering space shots at Cape Kennedy, Reporter John Wasik's fascination with the sky took him to nearby Green Air Park. With a parachuting club called the Falling Stars, Wasik, 29, a reporter for the Melbourne, Fla., Daily Times, made 17 weekend jumps, finding in his eerily placid descents a sense of euphoric freedom...
...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...