‘Our next adventure together’: Mother, daughter Aspenites continue family tradition of women skydivers
Michael Mason/Courtesy photo
The story of four generations of women skydivers began one night in the ’70s with a pick-up line in a bar in Pennsylvania.
Larry Trach saw Annie Kresge across the room of the Fox. Though nervous to approach her, he struck up the courage, walked over, and said, “Hello. I am Larry, and I fly airplanes.”
Annie had looked at him and replied, “Oh really? I jump out of them.”
“And that’s how this skydiving and flying family started,” said Rosalyn Pergande — Aspen local, pilot, and master-licensed skydiver.
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Laila Pergande, Rosalyn’s daughter who just graduated from Aspen High School this past spring, spends whole days skydiving, jumping from sunrise to sunset.
“Freefall is like a state of zen for me,” she said while sitting on rocks near a cliff on a bluebird day near Moab, Utah. “It makes you feel like a kid again — the sky is your playground.”
She was 17 when became a student to earn her A-license from the United States Parachute Association, a Federal Aviation Administration-accepted, nationally recognized organization. Just after her 18th birthday, she earned her license in mid-September.
As she was growing up, watching her mom Rosalyn skydive, she said she thought of all the doors opening up.
“I think it was cool to think about the possibilities,” she said. “For most people, skydiving is something you never really see or hear about. You’re not in that community already. I think it was nice to already be introduced to that right off the bat and be like, ‘What?! That’s my mom!'”
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“I think I would have been a skydiver regardless of whether my family was,” said Rosalyn. “I actually had this longing and passion to be in the sky. I felt that’s where I belonged, like I always wanted to be a bird, wanted to be in the sky.”
She would always look up at the clouds, she said, always wanting to fly through them or around them.
“I had this fascination as a child, and I couldn’t wait to skydive,” she said.
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She was 16 when she went through the student training program in Arizona.
“I remember my first skydive very well,” she recalled. “When I went up that day, it was actually sleeting and rainy; that was the only thing that kind of shocked me was that rain that hit my face.”
But the moment had finally arrived.
“I was waiting for that day my entire childhood that I think the excitement was so built up, I just couldn’t wait to get up in the plane, get up there, and jump out,” she said. “It felt like I conquered something I always wanted to do.”
Since then, she has jumped out of everything, including helicopters, air balloons, and specialty aircraft. She has also BASE jumped and wing walked.
“When I skydive, I don’t feel fear. I go up there, and I feel calm and peace,” she said. “Everything is beautiful.”
Some of the most peaceful skydives she has ever experienced, she said, are sunset jumps, when she and her friends are in wingsuits, flying toward the sun, watching the sun go down.
“We’ll fly together like a flock of birds,” she said. “The amount of peace that flows over my entire body and my mind is miraculous.”
And skydiving with friends just builds happiness upon happiness, she added.
“It’s like a bunch of children at play,” she said. “I’m playing with my friends. I can see the smiles on their faces, and I’m smiling.”
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Laila’s great-grandmother, Dorothy Crane-Kresge, was a world traveler who had a hotel up in Pennsylvania, with helicopters flying in and out of the property on rescue missions up in the mountains, recalled Rosalyn.
Laila’s grandmother, Annie, grew up on that property and was fascinated by the helicopters, as was Dorothy.
“My mom always admired her brother,” Rosalyn said, “who is my uncle and was parachuting in Vietnam, Okinawa, doing the HALO team. My mother looked up to him. And so she always had this fascination with flight and flying. She always wanted to fly.”
An opportunity arose for Annie one day, Rosalyn said, where she did two skydives.
“After that, she never looked back,” she said. “She got into it right away.”
Rosalyn’s sister, Olivia Trach-Thompson, started skydiving at 14 and eventually became a master-licensed skydiver, Rosalyn said. Olivia holds a world record of being the first woman in the world to skydive out of an airplane with a military ATV and land it.
Olivia recently retired from skydiving and now lives in Florida, her sister said. She may one day come out of retirement.
“I think she’s just waiting for her daughter to grow up,” Rosalyn said. “Her life got so busy with her family, and that’s become her priority. She’s very busy snowboarding, kiteboarding, surfing. That’s been her passion.”
Their mom was one of the first women to fly a wingsuit in the world. She helped Jari Kuosma, the founder of Bird-Man, develop it, Rosalyn said.
“My sister started flying wingsuit right away and so did I,” she said. “(Mom, sister, and I) were the first all women’s wingsuit team, called AirZoneXtreme.”
Dorothy, Laila’s great-grandmother, started skydiving in her 70s and didn’t have to be convinced to try it, Rosalyn said. It’s not too late to start, she recalls Dorothy saying.
“She wanted to do it. She was begging for it. It was something she was inspired to do,” she said of her grandmother. “She made her last skydive right before she passed away. She loved it. National Geographic came out and interviewed her, filmed her when she was skydiving.”
When Rosalyn was 22 and pregnant with her daughter, she continued snowboarding, surfing, and skydiving.
“I just went about my life as if ‘Whatever you do normally, just keep on doing it,” she said.
Her doctor didn’t recommend skydiving while pregnant but said Rosalyn was going to do whatever she wanted. A good friend of Rosalyn’s had skydived through all five of her pregnancies.
“My friend said, ‘Listen, if you are used to skydiving on a regular basis and you’re a professional skydiver, you’re fine,'” she said.
When she skydived, she said everything went fine. She made sure the weather and wind were good and kept the jump simple.
Rosalyn does wish her mom, who passed away nearly two decades ago, would have had an opportunity to skydive with her granddaughter, she said. But she takes solace in the fact that her mom “kind of” did.
“My mom, my sister, and I took a jump when I was 7 months pregnant with Laila,” she recalls. “That’s the only skydive she ever did with my daughter, when I was pregnant with her. She always knew my daughter would skydive.”
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Nowadays, Laila has been working to earn her B-license and continues to work on her pilot’s license, her mom said. She needs 50 skydives, one more written test, and water training, which is preparation for emergency water landings.
“The one thing I love about this sport is I’m still watching my coaches learn new things on jumps,” Laila said. “There is really so much to learn about this sport.
“I’m hoping to go all the way, coach one day, share the beauty of it with some other people, as well. I think that is definitely a big goal of mine, is to be able to help other people get to enjoy the sport.”
The two of them, however, have yet to skydive together, they both admitted. But Rosalyn already has in mind to take her daughter wing walking and BASE jumping.
“That’s our next adventure together,” she said.
Laila reflected on these upcoming moments.
“It’s a very special moment to be able to be in free fall with someone — it really connects you in a different way,” she said. “I hope to share that with my mom one day.”
Jonathan Bowers is the news editor for The Aspen Times. He can be reached at jbowers@aspentimes.com.
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