July 19, 2007

by Louis Bonnette

You know him as the guy who parachutes into Cowboy Stadium once or twice a football season.

Or as the fellow who's a member of all eight McNeese State booster clubs and on the board of directors of half of them.

But, you probably don't know that Dewayne Bruette once paid a $75 trespassing fine for jumping off the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.

True.

It was back when BASE (building, antennae, span, earth) jumping first began in 1980. This was originated as a challenge for sky divers by Carl Boenish, one of the pioneers in such efforts.

Bruette and three others scaled the 1,075 foot (75 floors) Texas State Commerce Building in Houston when it was under construction and parachuted off.

"It took us all night to get to the top," Bruette said. "We had to get past guards who were stationed on the first 20 floors and after that we had to climb up through angle iron the rest of the way. We would climb 10 flights of stairs and then rest."

Bruette and his jumpers waited until the sun came up - there were four cameras on the ground to document their stunt - and jumped at 8 a.m.

"We weren't expecting a crowd on the ground," he said. "But we landed only three blocks from a police station."

Bruette was the only one of the group caught and he paid the fine and also made headlines in the local paper.

His other endeavors to BASE jumping came off television antennaes in Houston (1000 feet) and Dallas (1800 feet), off a bridge over the New River Gorge in West Virginia and off El Captain in Yosemite Valley.

When he made that last jump, Bruette became the seventh sky diver in the world to complete this four phase challenge.

Later as a retirement gift to himself in 2001, he joined a traveling National Geographic party and jumped from the top of the 3,212 Angel Falls in the jungles of Venzuela.

All total, Bruette has made 3700 parachute jumps dating back to 1969 when he made his first jump as a 18 year old McNeese State student.

He had become fascinated with parachuting in the 1950s when he was 10 years old watching a television show by the name of "Ripcord."

At McNeese he joined the Parapoke parachute club after being impressed seeing members walking around campus with a gold parachute emblem on their shirt.

He remembers his first jump as "total silence once you left the plane."

Bruette left school after two years, joining the Marines. He now jumped on weekends and made over 400 jumps while he was in the service.

Returning home after service, he joined sky diving teams from Beaumont, Hammond and Covington, became a lab analyst at Conoco Chemical and made his first jump into Cowboy Stadium.

He recalled that the YMBC brought the first group of jumpers into Cowboy Stadium in conjunction with the air show that they used to stage, and he's now jumped in at least a dozen times.

As for injuries, Bruette figures he's broken 44 bones but most have been in sporting efforts other than sky diving, events such as hang gliding, rock climbing, snow skiing and kayaking.

He's had a couple of close calls, having to use his reserve chute on three occasions to safe his life, and he's walked away from two plane crashes, one on takeoff and the other after the plane had climbed to 300 feet but fell back to earth because of engine failure.

"I'm safer after I have jumped out of the plane," he said.

The sky diver admits that he has missed his target on several jumps.

"Probably the most disturbed people have gotten was when I landed on a green of a golf course in Zepher Hills, FLA. I bogged down ankle deep.

"Another time I gave an old lady a scare when I landed in her back yard just outside the window where she was washing dishes. I landed on a house roof in Beaumont and in a park when a kid was having a birthday party. I walked over to the kid and shook his hand just like this was all part of his party. "

Now at 56 years of age, he's jumping six to 10 times a year.

"Every jump now is pure pleasure for me,"he said, "and that is why I continue. I've never made anything on my jumps. I'm there for McNeese football, veteran's day, charitable organizations. Just get an aircraft, file with FAA, lock up the jumpers and hope for good weather."

His next jump?

Sept. 1 at Cowboy Stadium.