North Quabbin veterans join in effort to break skydiving record

ORANGE — Seeking camaraderie and a challenge, a group of local veterans joined in an effort seeking to break a world record by jumping out of a plane over the weekend.

To mark World Skydiving Day on Saturday, July 12, skydivers around the world challenged themselves to see how many jumps they could make in a day. In 2024, skydivers set a world record with 30,351 jumps in a single day worldwide, according to WorldSkydivingDay.org. This year, they sought to break that record.

For the third year in a row, some of these skydivers included veterans with the U.S. Marine Corps Scout Sniper Association, who traveled to Jumptown in Orange for a day of adventure and brotherhood.

“We’re bringing veterans together just to have a good time,” said Paul Schuster, vice president of Scout Sniper support with the U.S. Marine Corps Scout Sniper Association. “I’m recently retired from the Marine Corps and I wanted to find some people that I could hang out with, and this is an opportunity. The adrenaline, the rush of the military life we used to live — this is the closet thing we could get to it.”

The U.S. Marine Corps Scout Sniper Association is a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the highly trained Marines through reunions and community events. The nonprofit also offers financial assistance when needed.

Joe Carlson, commander of the Athol chapter of Disabled American Veterans, said skydiving has grown to be a common hobby for thrill-seeking veterans who wish to reconnect with the adrenaline they frequently faced during their military life.

“It’s a very popular activity amongst service members. It’s loud, it allows people to deal with traumatic events and work through them, going back to training techniques you learned in the military,” Carlson said. “It’s thrilling, I really enjoy it. First time going up there, I was scared, but this time it was amazing.”

Carlson is working toward getting his skydiving license at Jumptown and he was able to jump solo while many of the other veterans jumped tandem with an instructor.

Saturday’s event welcomed approximately 30 veterans and their families. The group included six local veterans from the North Quabbin Veterans Center.

“They said today was World Skydiving Day and they have it scheduled to have enough people jumping throughout the world today to break the world record,” said John Dodge of the North Quabbin Veterans Center. “We’ve got six of us jumping today, including two guys in their 90s — Don Flye and David Bramhall.”

Bramhall said he was excited to try skydiving and he wanted to do so as a personal challenge.

“I was the superintendent here (of the Athol-Royalston Regional School District) for 19 years and I watched a lot of people plummet, so I figured I would try before I die,” Bramhall said.

Also in attendance were Scout Snipers who traveled to Orange from Boston, Plymouth and even as far as North Carolina.

“This year, we opened it up in order to bring in the greater veteran community,” said Brian Higginbottom, vice president of events with the U.S. Marine Corps Scout Sniper Association. “We’re letting them come with us, hang out and talk about our experiences. … That’s one thing about the veterans community that we all have an understanding of — we are all one, we are all representing the United States.”

Carlson said Saturday’s event was a great way for the veterans to connect and reflect on their shared experience, no matter where and when they served and where life took them after their service.

Attendees had plenty of time to connect and share stories throughout the day, as heavy cloud cover delayed jump times by several hours. They played cornhole, shared information on resources and raised money for the U.S. Marine Corps Scout Sniper Association with a raffle.

“Different generations like doing different things and you’ve got to make it all-inclusive,” Carlson said. “We’ve found a nice event that every generation seems to like.”

Reach Madison Schofield at 413-930-4579 or mschofield@recorder.com.