It's never too late to live your life. One Korean War veteran is celebrating getting older in style. Ivan Smith is flying high on life, quite literally. The veteran went skydiving for his 95th birthday in an inspirational and astounding video below.
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Smith is used to being in an airplane, having been in one in the military. "From the 70s, whenever we got our airplanes and then, and I've flown, I've flown with Patty Wagstaff and that's aerobatic type flying. And of course, I wore a parachute at that time, but thank God I didn't have to come out of that little airplane," said Smith.
While he didn't jump out of one at the time, the veteran finally got to remedy that by going skydiving at 95. "George Bush jumped out at 94, I think, and or 90 or 93 or 94 or something. And I feel like that. Yeah. 95 I can do that," said Smith. Smith is a former Marine who served in the Korean War.
Veteran Reflects On Services
"I was in Panama, I made a pack, you might say, of whoever's left. Winds ends up with the trophy with...I think it's a bourbon and bourbon or something in the container that I have," Smith said of his time in the military. During his time there, he built his a Scorpion helicopter and also a two-person submarine.
"We did so much flying across country, flying. We did a lot of that. So, we know what flying is all about. So, it's nothing. Nothing to it as far as I'm concerned," said Smith. "In the 1950s, I didn't have, I didn't have a lot of money to buy parachutes and such as that. So, I went scuba diving. So, what's left? Skydiving."
Smith wants to come back to skydive for his 100th birthday. However, Smith is far from the only veteran celebrating his 95th birthday by skydiving. Hector Hita Sr. served as a pilot in the U.S. Army's 11th Airborne Division. His son surprised him with a skydiving trip for his 95th birthday as well. It's Hita's 50th time jumping from a plane.
"I told him this past Monday, and as I told him about it, his head and shoulders dropped then he looked at me teary-eyed," Vince Hita told WFLA. "I remember that feeling when in September 2016, he told me I was going with him and other Elks Club members to Pearl Harbor for the 75th anniversary of the attack."
