A 90-year-old World War II nurse and overall champion at life, went skydiving on Wednesday with a bunch of veterans and had an absolute blast.
According to ABC 11, Jan Kirkpatrick wanted to do something special for her 90th birthday. But unlike most grandmothers, Kirkpatrick decided to jump out of a plane at 14,000 feet — all in the name of living in the moment.
“Oh, I have lots of friends waiting [for us] to call and tell them we’re having a funeral,” Kirkpatrick told ABC 11. “I said ‘Well if I die dropping, you can just have a funeral while everybody’s here.”
The grandmother of six got in contact with the All Veteran Parachute Team — the same company that jumped with former President George H.W. Bush three times — and set an appointment to parachute out of a plane over Raeford, North Carolina, at 250 miles-per-hour, ABC 11 reported. (RELATED: President George H.W. Bush Celebrates 90th Birthday By Jumping Out Of Plane)
Kirkpatrick has a track record, however, of being a spirited trailblazer, joining the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps when she was just 18. During the war, she was stationed in South Carolina, treating wounded soldiers who just returned home.
“We had no anesthesia except ether,” she said about her days as a nurse. “We had no plastic. We had no penicillin. Sulfa drugs came out during the war. Anything we used in surgery we used over and over again, because we didn’t throw anything away. It’s an entirely different world.”
But on Wednesday, she spent her time with veterans training and then jumping out of a plane wearing a red, white and blue parachute.
“As I’ve told her I’ve jumped with a lot of veterans of World War II. I was in France two years ago for the 70th anniversary. Today it just puts the icing on the cake,” president of the All Veteran Parachute Group and Army veteran Mike Elliott told ABC 11.
Before Fitzpatrick took-off, she had her daughter Lynn Mauss add a fresh coat of pink lip gloss, while her daughter told Abc11 her mom would “be so upset if I let her get on [TV] without it.”
When Fitzpatrick headed over to the plane, she told the camera she was “going to see God’s creation.”
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