“It was so beautiful up there”
104-year-old woman dies a week after record jump
October 11, 2023, 1:39 p.m
Dorothy Hoffner’s picture went viral at the beginning of the month. At the age of 104, she jumps from a height of 4,100 meters towards the earth. This makes her the oldest female skydiver in the world. She dies before her record is officially recognized.
The world’s oldest female skydiver is dead. Dorothy Hoffner, who tandem jumped from a plane near Chicago at a height of 4,100 meters on October 1st, was found dead in her bed at the beginning of the week by a close acquaintance, Joe Contant. reports the Associated Press. She died peacefully in her sleep, they said.
She had experienced a lot in the previous weeks. “Age is just a number,” Hoffner said after her jump in early October. This went around the world and is likely to earn her an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. Not all the formalities have been clarified yet, but the jump is expected to replace that of the then 103-year-old Swede Linnéa Ingegärd Larsson in May 2022. Contant, who works as a carer, still wants to struggle through the process, which will ultimately ensure entry into the book of records. It will take time, he said.
“It was so beautiful up there”
Hoffner used the walker to get to the plane on October 1, 2023.
(Photo: picture alliance / Newscom)
“She didn’t want to break this record. That wasn’t her intention. She didn’t want publicity either. She only did it because she wanted to skydive,” explained Contant, who over the years helped Hoffner with a caregiver at the Brookdale Lake View retirement home had become a friend. He was allowed to call her “grandmother.”
“She was tireless,” said Contant after the senior woman’s death. “She just kept going. She just didn’t take naps. She didn’t miss any evening events. She was always there. She was always present. She just kept going.” And so, late in her life, she fell in love with skydiving. Because her jump at the beginning of October was by no means her first. She had already thrown herself into the adventure at the age of 100.
“It was so beautiful up there,” Hoffner said after her jump earlier this month. “It was so wonderful. It couldn’t have been better.” What a brilliant end to a long life.