On the 25th August 2004 Martyn died doing what he loved best, playing football. Not only was Martyn my boyfriend, he was a great friend, not just to me but also to everyone who knew him.
Having lost Martyn last August to Sudden Adult Death Syndrome I felt I wanted to do something to help raise awareness and funding for CRY. I thought of what would be the most challenging thing for me to do and that was a SKYDIVE.
I started going about organising our skydive and asked Martyn’s family and friends if they would be interested in doing this with me, the response was immense.
Twenty-five of us did a Tandem Skydive on July 15th, which would have been Martyn’s 25th Birthday. I wanted to make the day as special as possible because he was very special to all of us.
We hired a coach and made our way to Hinton Skydive Centre with around 50 supporters and 25 Skydivers. All morning I was feeling very nervous and just wanted the jump to be over as soon as possible as I didn’t know what to expect.
The Skydiving instructors were amazing and were very professional. Going up in the plane seemed to take forever but coming down never lasted long enough. Coming out of the plane all happened very quickly but when the parachute opened you have an over whelming feeling of relief and excitement, everything is so quiet and the views from that height are unbelievable.
The day went perfect as can be. We had a BBQ, raffle prizes and a charity disco in the evening back at our local pub. We managed to raise £13,254.59 in memory of Martyn.
Organising this Skydive has helped me understand more about SADS and CRY. It’s also filled a little hole for me in the healing process.
We would like to say a huge thank you to our Skydivers, supporters and everyone who contributed to the day’s event with huge thank you to Hinton Skydive Centre for everything they did for us.
Cheryl Smith
