EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was written prior to Jimmy Owens’ 85th birthday.

Mention those who are among the first residents at the Sallisaw Veterans Center, and most probably think of quiet, reflective days relaxing in a recliner, reading a book, possibly making new acquaintances, sharing a laugh with an attentive staff member and looking forward to an unhurried meal with fellow veterans.

Those with that image of life at 2343 S. Kerr Boulevard don’t know Jimmy Owens.

Owens, who turns 85 Monday, has been at the veterans center for about a month. He’s an amputee who spends most of his time in a motorized wheelchair, and has two 12-inch rods in his back from his military service.

But he has loftier aspirations. Aspirations that take him through footless halls of air high in the sunlit silence some 12,000 feet into the sky, where he can slip the surly bonds of Earth to leap out of a perfectly good airplane into the ether.

Despite admitting that he is “afraid of high places,” he keeps climbing into an airplane — up, up the long, delirious, burning blue into the wind-swept heights where never lark or even eagle flew — then hurls himself through an open door into the firmament, joining the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds to chase the shouting wind along, before returning to earth on a canopy of silk.

As Owens trods the high untrespassed sanctity of space — enjoying the solitude of his silent, lifting mind high above the earthly terrain — it’s as if he can put out his hand and touch the face of God.

He’s done that at least 23 times so far. Sunday, about two miles above Skiatook Airport, he’ll make it an even two dozen.

From 1958-62, Owens served in the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, which specializes in parachute assault operations responding to crisis contingencies in denied areas. His first 21 jumps were in the military, the last one on his 21st birthday.

Fifty-nine years later, on his 80th birthday in 2020, Owens experienced a tandem skydive. Returning to the heavens was at the top of his bucket list, and he viewed it as his final jump.

“Out of all those 21 jumps I did in the service, Number 22 was the softest I’d ever landed,” he said in 2020.

But five years later, he’s added two more.

On Memorial Day, he undertook another tandem jump to bring attention to “those we’re honoring who died” in service to their country.

Now, to celebrate his 85th birthday, he’s doing it again. This time it’s on his dream list.

“I plan on doing it on my 90th birthday,” he proclaims. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m enjoying what I’m doing, and I enjoy skydiving. A couple of more [tandem] jumps after this, I guess I’ll have to solo. I’ll be here, age 90.”

The former Vian resident and longtime teacher expects his 24th jump to be much like his 22nd and 23rd, but concedes, “We’ll find out.”

“I invited all my former students to come and watch [in 2020], and I’m inviting all my former students now,” Owens says. And although he retired from the classroom just before he turned 80, he hasn’t given up on continuing his love for teaching.

“I’m looking forward to trying to teach some more, in some fashion or other. I think I’ve still got it. Most of it, anyway,” he says. In his eight years at Vian High School, he taught history, government, economics, geography and sociology.

Despite his limitless enthusiasm, Owens acknowledges that not everyone in his family shares his high-flying fascination.

“There are a couple of them [who said], ‘No, I’m not going to come and watch you jump out of an airplane.’ I can understand that. But it does give you a thrill. After this one, we’ll do a 90th one,” Owens says in anticipation.

“I think I’ve got several of my relatives that are going to show up this time that didn’t see the first one,” he adds.

“The weather looks good, and it’s going to be hot,” although he points out that “It’s cold up there” at 12,000 feet.

After exiting the airplane in tandem, Owens will freefall for about 45 seconds. Then when the parachute is deployed, the slow descent lasts about five to seven minutes.

“It seems like forever,” he says of the freefall, “because you’re concentrating on ‘Where is that drop zone?’ You do a freefall for several thousand feet, and then you open your chute.”

On solid ground

Owens retired as a high school principal at Nowata, then moved back to his hometown of Vian.

“When I moved back to Vian, I was so tickled to be able to teach a few more years.”

In recent years he’s tried to count all the students he’d taught, but lost count. “It was enjoyable. But I’ve got a little advice: If you don’t like your job, get out of it.”

Then he admits that too many of those he’s found who are unhappy with their job are schoolteachers. “They’ve got to love that job. It’s not for the money.”

When he’s not checking off achievements on his bucket list, Owens pursues other goals.

He’s working on not one, but two, books.

“I’ve got two that I’m working on. One is about my great-grandfather and his Civil War days,” he says, which augurs well with his love for history. “We traced his route from getting captured in Arkansas and being sent to a POW camp in Springfield, Illinois. And some of those battles in and around Atlanta. I call it historical fiction.”

His other book stems from a fateful night on Oct. 27, 1962, when he lost his right leg in a one-car accident on U.S. 64 between Sallisaw and Vian. He was 22 years old, having recently returned home from the service.

“The other one is more or less when I had my car accident, how I dealt with it. It’s more inspirational, hopefully, than anything.

“The good Lord and I had a little talk after that, and I told Him that ‘I will do your bidding’,” he recalled in 2020. “I thought about preaching for a while, but I thought teaching would be better.

“I write it in the third person, because I feel I can distance myself from the situation.” The book’s working title is “The Other Side of the Fence.”

And in the blue expanse over Skiatook on Sunday — from a freefall that seems to last forever to the several minutes of slow descent once his parachute deploys — Owens will have time to not only enjoy, yet again, the thrill of wingless flight, but also a time of contemplation and reflection on his 85 years on — and above — this earth.