Darrel Jenkins is not the kind of man who jumps out of airplanes. He was born in Freedom on Jan. 18, 1920. He married the love of his life, Magdalene, and the two of them spent a lifetime scraping a living off the land, managing a dairy farm and building a family together.

“When you dairy farm you don’t have time to do much of anything else,” he said.
Seven years ago Darrel and his wife moved to Logan. Magdalene passed away two years later.

Darrel still considers Star Valley to be his home and makes trips to Freedom on a fairly regular basis. This summer while making his way back from the valley to Logan with his son, Kim, the two started talking about the future.

“I was kidding around with my dad a little, just giving him a hard time and I asked him if there was anything he wanted to do in his life that he hadn’t done,” said Kim. “He told me that ever since he’d heard about President Bush, the first one, jumping out of a plane he’d wanted to try skydiving.”

Kim took that declaration to heart and called his brother, Jake, to arrange the whole thing. On Saturday, July 12, 2008, Darrel became a skydiver.

“I guess what I learned from all this is that I need to be very careful of what I say to my kids anymore,” he said. “They might take me up on it.”

At the grand old age of 88 and a half, Darrel was the oldest skydiver by a few months that the Ogden based skydiving company had ever had.

“They had another fellow who was 88 jump, but my birthday is in January so I was older than he was,” said Darrel. “I was a little nervous thinking I might screw up some way.”

First time skydivers, no matter what their age, do a tandem jump, meaning they are connected to an instructor.

Two of Darrel’s granddaughters also decided they wanted to get in on the skydiving action.
“I guess they figured if I could do it, they could do it,” said Darrel. “I really didn’t have to do much talking to talk them into it.”

While Natalie Jenkins and Janaan Weaver jumped with grandpa, a number of Darrel’s other family members traveled to witness the experience from the ground below.

“It was unlike anything else I’ve ever done,” said Darrel of his jump. “It was a thrilling experience.”
Darrel said his favorite part of the whole experience was “landing.”

“I was just glad when that chute opened,” he said. “After that it was just a matter of floating down.”

To this day Darrel is not exactly sure what prompted him to announce that he wanted to try skydiving.

“At some point in life you just lose your marbles,” he said. “But I’ve got it in my mind to try it again next summer. We’ll see how things go. We never get to old to try something new. I don’ think I’m ever going to get to the point where I will jump out on my own.”

Only time will tell. But one thing is certain, at the age of 88, Darrel may be over the hill, but his is still riding above the clouds.