Photo courtesy Skydive Snohomish (photo by Kelly Craig)
SNOHOMISH — Kim Knor can’t stop. She’s trying to reach a personal goal of 1,000 skydives.
Last week, she logged No. 730 and No. 731 dropping from 13,500 feet above Snohomish.
The experience of flight is what drives the 85-year-old.
It’s “’woo-hoo!’ I’m up in the sky! I love it - I love to be up there,” she told reporters before her first dive.
It’s freedom, like flying like a bird, she said.
When not flying in the air, she’s out downhill skiing.
She had to explain that to her family, too.
“This is what I do,” Knor said.
She’s skydived with her daughters, as well as her granddaughters.
There’s nobody like her, longtime friend Sarah Dimmock of West Seattle said.
“Even 20 years ago, I couldn’t keep up with her,” Dimmock said.
Knor got the bug at age six.
A bunch of the guys who were Airborne Rangers and Special Forces came home from World War II accustomed to jumping from planes.
Her uncle brought home a parachute.
“All I could think of was jumping,” she said.
She wanted that.
She did her first jump before age 21 on Jan. 13, 1959. Then she went again that day. And again another day. Again and again.
In short order, she became a competitive skydiver.
In 1962, she took gold as one of the four women on the U.S. women’s team in that year’s World Parachuting Championships against 18 other countries.
She’s skydived all over Europe, and most states in the United States.
The best view was maybe Hawaii, seeing the whole island, she said. Then again, maybe it was diving in Europe with the Bavarian mountains in view, or the Alsace region of France.
“Jumping was going to be my life,” Knor said, and she accumulated 545 jumps into the 1980s. But a halting moment kept her away from skydiving for 37 years.
Professionally, she worked as an ophthalmologist, particularly with contact lenses, for 45 years.
Knor is an ambassador with the International Skydiving Museum and Hall of Fame, and in 2013 was inducted into its Hall of Fame, for its fourth round of inductees.
When life changed again, she sold the house and bought a 21-foot RV. She’s been taking that red Roadtrek Zion RV all over, going to skydive centers along the way.
She picked up the sport again around age 74. In the past 10 or so years, she’s been crisscrossing America and has done 200 more dives.
Before Snohomish, she’d jumped at a center in Chelan County four days prior.
This winter, she said she’ll try skydiving in Mexico.
She’s originally from Cadillac, Michigan, a small town in northern Michigan. She mentioned to her hometown paper The Cadillac News that the United States Parachute Association is helping publicize her quest for 1,000 jumps.
Anybody who’s fit enough can skydive, Skydive Snohomish owner Tyson Harvey said.
“It’s a perfect retirement sport,” Knor said.
Knor is a certified parachutist, but she did her tandem jumps with Kelly Craig, one of the company’s tandem jumpers.
Knor, like the six other dive customers on the plane, watched the training video before being allowed to strap on the chute.
When she landed, she burst with energy.
“Skydivers all have the same DNA — you can’t deny it, they need to be in the sky,” Knor said.
