{"id":24320,"date":"2024-12-20T21:41:44","date_gmt":"2024-12-21T04:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-resident-goes-skydiving-to-celebrate-90th-birthday\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:51:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:51:55","slug":"cortez-resident-goes-skydiving-to-celebrate-90th-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-resident-goes-skydiving-to-celebrate-90th-birthday\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez resident goes skydiving to celebrate 90th birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Vern
Vern Crites went skydiving with eight family members, and the rest of his family came to watch. (LaDawn Rogers\/Courtesy Photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A 90th birthday is a milestone that should receive recognition, but rarely does it involve celebrating by jumping out of a plane.<\/p>\n

In Cortez resident Vern Crites\u2019 case, however, that is exactly how his 90th birthday was ushered in \u2014 by jumping out of a plane at 14,000 feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad I did it,\u201d Crites said. \u201cI liked it, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019d do it again at my age.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crites didn\u2019t skydive alone. He was joined in the air by eight members of his family, including his son-in-law, grandsons, a grandson-in-law, a nephew and a great-grandson.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was minus 30 degrees Celsius,\u201d Crites said. \u201cIt was cold. The first minute you fall, you free fall. You go a long ways in that first minute. You get up to 130 miles an hour falling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the cold and the height, Crites said he had no time to get scared and was determined to see the jump through.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re committed. Once you\u2019re in that airplane, you\u2019re pretty well committed. I had no desire to back out, so I was determined to do it,\u201d Crites said. \u201cI don\u2019t think many people do it on their 90th birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Vern
Vern Crites went skydiving for his 90th birthday. (LaDawn Rogers\/Courtesy Photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Crites noted that the idea of skydiving for his 90th birthday was inspired by former President George H.W. Bush, who also went skydiving for his 90th birthday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018Well, if he can do it, I can do it,\u2019\u201d Crites said. \u201cI thought at that time that was quite a feat, and I\u2019ve been really blessed with good health and longevity. I\u2019ve outlived all my siblings and lived longer than my parents did, so I feel really blessed. I thought, \u2018Well, I want to do something a little different.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

While the jump itself was thrilling, Crites said that the best and most memorable part of the day was being able to jump and spend time with his family.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was exciting, but the fun part of it was that so many members of the family were jumping the same day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Though eight members of the family skydived with him, his whole family was in attendance to watch him jump.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have one daughter living, my son passed away, and I have nine grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren,\u201d Crites said. \u201cThey all live right here in the Cortez area, and they were all there that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about his next birthdays, Crites laughed and said that he did have some ideas for more fun birthday celebrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to kayak the Colorado River,\u201d he said. \u201cI told somebody today I might go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, but of course, that was a joke.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

went skydiving with his family to celebrate the occasion<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78483,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24320\/revisions\/78483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24320"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}