No, it’s not a bird. And it’s not quite a plane, either. Up in the sky over Fowlerville on Thursday was 85-year-old Michigan native Kim Knor, completing her 698th skydive.
Knor is a long-term skydiver, taking her first jump at age 20, before taking a 37-year hiatus to raise a family. Now, as a great-grandmother, Knor is eagerly jumping her way across the country toward her lifelong goal of 1,000 skydives. She travels in a mobile home by herself, jumping out of airplanes whenever she can.
“I go coast to coast, it’s addictive,” Knor said.
Knor, originally from Cadillac, found a passion for the sport when she was young and her uncle was training to be a naval pilot. She heard stories about him jumping from planes and became captivated by it.
“I said ‘I have to do that,’ and it took a while, but I did,” Knor said.
This weekend, Knor will return to the site of many of her first jumps in the 1950s, in Grand Haven, to complete her 700th skydive on World Skydiving Day. She will be a part of skydivers across the globe hoping to set a world record for most skydives in one day.
Daniel Castillo, a third-generation skydiver and instructor at iSkydive Detroit, in Fowlerville, said Knor motivates him to keep jumping at just 38 years old.
“I would love to do it as much as she has done it,” Castillo said. “The passion she has for it is amazing.”
Knor knows that at 85, she is racing against the clock to earn her United States Parachute Association Gold Wings for making 1,000 skydives, but she is determined to do it.
“God is in charge, so I don’t know. It’s up to him,” she said. “But he gave me this idea to do it, so I’m doing it,” Knor said.
And at nearly 700 jumps, she’s not too far away.
“I’m not in a wheelchair, I’m not in a rocking chair, I don’t sit on the couch and I don’t watch TV,” Knor said. “So what do I do? I go jump out of airplanes.”
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan native Kim Knor, 85, wants to skydive 1,000 times
