Parachute

The Double D Gymnastics team, including (from left) Corey Densmore, Kayleigh Gilligan and Patrick Densmore, use a parachute to show off their skills. The team was part of the entertainment Saturday at a combined celebration of Middletown Township's Pride Day and Friends of Elwyn Festival at Elwyn Inc.

Stay away. That is, if you wish to remain sane. On Saturday, as 12,000 Villanova and University of Delaware fans descend on campus for the Wildcats' homecoming game, already congested Lancaster Avenue will be partially closed from 7:30 to 10 a.m. for a fun run in Wayne. Then it will be shut down completely from 2 to 4 p.m. between Radnor-Chester and Conestoga/Eagle Roads for a Radnor Fire Company parade. "Traffic nightmare" is an accurate description of what they expect this weekend, Radnor Township police said.

Staff Sgt. Joseph Zippilli's belief that war is indeed hell came when a German corporal on a motorcycle and Hungarian civilians started racing toward him as he was parachuting into a field near Budapest on April 13, 1944. The German corporal got there first and had to hold the hostile civilians at gunpoint until Zippilli could climb onto the back of the motorcycle. Ed Barniskis of Cherry Hill learned how horrible war can be on May 6, 1942, the day he and 250 other soldiers surrendered Fort Drum, an island fortress near Corregidor, to the Japanese.

No one was skydiving above Cross Keys Airport yesterday. Gray skies grounded the planes, leaving routine jumpers to grieve and wonder what caused veteran skydiver Denise Daddio to plunge to her death Sunday afternoon. Friends said Daddio, 43, of Hamilton Township, was on her first jump of the day when her parachute failed to open. An unidentified friend who jumped with her said she appeared to pull the two cords needed to deploy a small pilot chute and main parachute before plunging 13,500 feet into a wooded area in Washington Township.

For 60 seconds Sunday morning Denise Daddio performed an air ballet, bolstered by the confidence gained in more than 500 successful jumps. She twisted and turned to choreographed moves with her skydiving partner. The two started at 13,500 feet, and they plummeted toward the ground at 125 miles an hour. After just one minute of free fall, their altimeters read 4,000 feet and the pair broke away to deploy their parachutes. Daddio pulled her rip cord. The pilot chute - a small parachute attached to the top of the main chute - deployed, according to witnesses.

Millions of Americans jumped out of bed this morning. Dale Nelson jumped out of an airplane. Again and again and again and again. . . . Nelson, of Malvern, Pa., is attempting to break the Guinness Book world record for the most consecutive sky dives in a 24-hour period. If all goes as planned, Nelson will throw his 48-year-old body out of an aircraft over Cross Keys Airport every 3 1/2 minutes. To beat the record held by Jay Stokes of Arizona, Nelson must dive more than 384 times before the clock strikes 1 p.m. today - more than 16 jumps per hour.

George Bush jumped from an airplane at 72. Mark Spitz tried to qualify again for the Olympics - and narrowly missed - at 40. And now John Glenn wants to return to space at 76. The message, according to experts on aging, is that the number of candles on your birthday cake no longer matters. What matters is how you feel, what you are capable of. "This just shows that age is irrelevant," said Ronald Klatz, president of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. "Age means less and less and less today.

Where to start with Miss Kim Coles, one of the stars of Fox's Living Single? There's the book she's hawking, the cartoon she's shopping, the Off-Broadway show she starred in. "Sitcom life does not last forever," she said one early morning last week from her West Hollywood home, conducting a phone interview while filling her dishwasher and cleaning her make-up brushes. "I'm prepared for the day that this show is not picked up again. " That day may come sooner rather than later.

Olympics organizers recommended a $2 million compensation package for Tom Welch, who brought the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City but resigned amid charges he abused his wife. "This was an effort to be fair to him in light of the service that he rendered," said Jim Jardine, legal counsel for the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee's board of trustees. The board's executive committee emerged from a three-hour closed meeting recommending that SLOC chairman Frank Joklik serve as Welch's interim replacement as president and CEO. Members also voted to hire Welch, a former corporate lawyer, as a consultant for $10,000 a month and to pay him $1 million to compensate him for his service from 1989-95 in which he wasn't paid.

Beginning this year, thousands of homeowners will face a major financial decision, a "mortgage event" that some may not have bargained for and others may have forgotten about since they first took out their loans. These people are the borrowers who opted for seven-year balloon mortgages with starting rates up to 0.75 percent below the going rate at the time for 30-year fixed-rate loans. In return for the lower rate, these borrowers agreed to either pay off their loans or accept a one-time adjustment in their rates seven years out. Early indications are that most borrowers knew that they had taken on what Frank Demarais at Fannie Mae calls "event risk," and they reacted wisely.