I FEEL SO ALIVE: Accessible Skydiving and the Guy Who Made It Happen for Me
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n a cold, still morning, camped on a lake, with dawn weak in the sky and autumn bittersweet in the air, I woke to the message that Nathan was gone. I was shocked. Nathan Dexter took me on my first skydive. That day had been electric, one of the most exciting of my life. Nathan was electric. How could he possibly be dead? Nathan and I jumped together for Skydiving for MS. For 19 years people with MS and their allies took to the air over Chicagoland Skydiving Center in Rochelle, Illinois. What started as an annual benefit for the late Ken Adams, expanded into one of CSC’s signature events, raising over $250,000 for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. I touted it as “The Most Exciting Fundraiser in the World,” and the epic raffles and after-parties definitely were. In addition to fundraising, the event succeeded in its mission of getting disabled jumpers in the air, growing from one or two to dozens. I was one of the many who got hooked — over the years I jumped 11 times.
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I loved skydiving, but more than that I loved skydiving with Nathan, the instructor for my first four jumps. Of the many lifelong friends I made at CSC, he was the one I most looked forward to seeing. I’d roll out of the minivan with butterflies. The plane revving on the airstrip ... the scheduling orders crackling over the PA ... the outfitted skydivers rushing to and fro … all on the move. But none of it was real, not until I’d heard Nathan’s jolly, swaggering pirate’s laugh. Like him, it was larger than life and full of gusto. The adventure had begun. “My most potent memory of Nathan is that raspy laugh that would just carry through the hangar,” says Becky Johns, former events and marketing director at CSC and a student of Nathan’s. News of his death by heart attack in 2020 “sent a wave of shock through the community.” He was 48. “He was a big personality,” says CSC owner Doug Smith, a close friend and competition teammate of Nathan’s. “You know, he could sometimes be abrasive to people because he’s
