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3 Strikes in Any League
By PAUL GALLICO.

THERE was a little parachute jumper by the name of Lucille Parker, a Virginian, at the Women's National Air Races at Dayton, O.  She was entered in the parachute jumping contest, but none of the other contestants showed up so she gave an exhibition each day, thrilling the crowd with her delayed jump.  The first day she waited until she was 500 feet from the ground before pulling her ripcord, and the second day she fell even closer before hr pilot 'chute blossomed out, opened the big umbrella and settled her to the ground.  I was over at the broadcasting and announcing booth the day she made her second jump and the announcer was saying "Oh, Mrs. Parker is making a beautiful jump, a beeyoutiful jump.  It's really beeeeeeeeyoutiful.  Look how long she is waiting to pull that cord.  What a thrill . . what a thrill . ."

Now, through all this, the black speck which was Miss Parker was tumbling and spinning through the air, closed and closer to the ground, most of us were beginning to draw in our breaths in agony when the chute opened and she came to earth.  A few minutes later Miss Parker was driven up to the microphone.  She was dusty and pale, limping a little from a bad ankle, and her uniform was torn.  She murmured the usual nothings into the microphone but then added before she left——"... and I have made my last jump.  I'll never jump a chute again."  The announcer said——"Indeed.  And tell the folks, Miss Parker, why that was your last jump."  But she shook her head and refused.  I heard her reiterate two or three times to friends that she had made her last jump and I stretched an ear to see if I could overhear why.  But she never would tell.  I made up my mind I had to know.

Well, then Frances Harrell Marsalis fell and died so tragically and everything else was forgotten for a time but sympathy and collecting information.  But while I was sitting in the administration office writing my story a tiny brunette with a pleasant smile came over and said——"I don't think you remember me, but I met you in New York.  I want you to remember me to Joe Williams when you get back to New York.  I am Miss Parker."  It was the little parachute jumper and I all but threw my arms around her neck because it looked like a chance to find out why she had taken her last jump.  Just then old Professor Swanee Taylor came along and I made him guard Miss Parker until I finished my piece.  Then I coaxed her to tell.

"Well," she said, I didn't want to talk about it.  I'm still scared.  I've never been so scared in all my life.  I'm so scared that I'm through.  Everybody thought I made two delayed jumps the last two days.  Two days in a row my main chute has failed to open and I have had to pull the emergency chute.  Today I got the emergency open just in time.  A second more would have been too late.  The next time, neither one will open.  Three strikes is out in any league."

Now, you have my word that the young lady was still able to smile and did so when she said this, and she was a young lady twice dead and still alive.  She has made more than thirty jumps and never has had too use the emergency chute which all parachute jumpers must wear by order of the Department of Commerce.  And then, twice in a row, at an air meet at which Death had marked off a victim, it happened.  The first time she said it was her fault because she was using a new chute and pulled the cord the wrong way.  The second time the chute struck and not even a strong man on the ground, could burge the ripcord.  If she had fought with it another second, SHE would have been dead, and Frances Harrell Marsalis would be alive today because they would have called off the race.  There was tragedy hovering about that meet.  No wonder the girl won't jump again.  She had two warnings.  Mrs. Marsalis had only one.

There is something about a girl crushed to death in a racing plane that catches at the throat.  They are soft and fluffy and gay.  They are not meant to be violently killed and lie in fields like dead birds.  The girl's plane was a bright red, but the mangled door of the crushed cockpit was stained even a darker crimson.  You cannot know the terror that grips the heart—doubly intensified when a woman is involved—of seeing a ship dip low far off and fail to rise again, then to see the column of smoke or dust arise, and wait helplessly, picturing in your mind some gay, gallant, light hearted figure with whom you had been taking and joking a few minutes before, mangled and roasting and then suddenly to have the spell broken horribly and gruesomely by the moaning siren of the meat wagon, as the ambulance is called on the flying field, as it rolls out of the airport and disappears toward the scene of the vanished ship.

We hoped against hope right up to the last minute, but when we counted ships as they flew across the finish line and there were but ten where eleven had taken off, it was definite and the victim was identified.  Red and white, orange and black, red and black, cream, brown and blue ships all flew back to the roost, but the gaudy gay red one lay crumpled in the distant field, with the dust still settling on it and we could hear, growing fainter down the road, the wailing siren of the meat wagon.  Afterwards we all went back to the hotel, the little parachute jumper who had been close to infinity and didn't want to be alone, and a couple of pilots and writers, and some body found a bottle of brandy which we all needed, and we drank [[?]] and we drank to the dead and the day ended.
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