If you see a four-story illuminated American flag fluttering 10,000 feet above Boulder just after midnight New Year’s Eve, it’s not necessarily a sign that you’ve had too much to drink.
The 38-foot by 70-foot flag, which will be attached to a skydiver and lit up by two other jumpers as part of a dramatic descent through the night sky Friday, will serve as a memorial to a pilot who perished over the city in a mid-air plane collision nearly a year ago.
Colorado SkySports is planning four jumps at Boulder Municipal Airport starting at 10 p.m. — each jump will be timed to coincide with the arrival of 2011 in one of the four time zones across the continental United States — as part of an effort by the skydiving company to raise money for the Alex Gilmer Flight School Scholarship.
Gilmer, 25, died Feb. 6 after the Piper Pawnee tow plane he was piloting was hit in the side by a Cirrus SR20 plane, resulting in both aircraft exploding in midair. The two men in the Cirrus, brothers Mark Matthews, 56, and Bob Matthews, 58, also died.
The three occupants of the plane Gilmer was towing survived. Glider pilot Rueben Bakker managed to detach from the tow plane moments before the collision and get himself and his two passengers — a mother and her 11-year-old son — back on the ground safely.
Read the rest of this report, including more about Gilmer and the planned jumps, at .
