"Good and
proper!"
Buffalo
Bill Cody's wife was no fool. She was part of his act in his Wild West show. When
they were touring London in 1903, one of his trick shots went awry. Mrs.
Buffalo Bill was supposed to stand still with a plaster egg on top of her head
while Buffalo shot it off. Except this time, his bullet put a crease in her
scalp.
She wisely
decided to depart the stage with her hair neatly and newly parted. Now a
volunteer was needed. Fearless sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Shepherd came
forward. She took her spot but legend has it she became a little disconcerted
when she saw Cody's daughter blindfold her father.
With a
bang, she became part of his act and changed her name to Dolly Shepherd.
(At least
this is what one legend says is true. Another account says she wanted to see
John Philip Sousa's band perform but had no money for a ticket. She got work as
a waitress at the exhibition grounds. Its location gave her a view of the stage. There she overheard a pair of diners saying the job was available. One suspects there might not have been too many candidates for the position.)
For
whatever reasons, Dolly later decided that she, too, did not want Cody shooting at a
plaster egg balanced on her head. He was also an inventor. This was the year 1903.
Everyone had aviation fever. Cody was working on building giant kites, one large
enough to take a person aloft. This spectacle would become part of his show.
Hold of a trapeze bar
While doing
research, Cody took her to the workshop of a French balloon maker. Months
later, he asked her to return. He asked to feel her grip. Seeing
that it was strong, he asked her to hang from a trapeze.
Soon
enough, Dolly chose a different and possibly safer way to thrill crowds—She did
parachute jumps from smoke balloons.
Here is how this form of entertainment worked: A pit would be dug, and a fire would be started in it. Then the sack
of a balloon would be suspended above the blaze so rising hot smoky air
would inflate it. A parachute would be attached to the bottom of the balloon.
A daredevil,
preferably a lovely maiden, would grab hold of a trapeze bar suspended below
the balloon. The balloon would rise to a height of 1,000 to 4,000 feet with the maiden dangling below it.
When she
let go, the balloon was designed in such a way so that when her weight was
gone, the it would naturally deflate.
"When you
pulled the rip cord that pulls the balloon almost in half, and a sandbag pulls
the balloon down, you come down," she recalled years later.
"You couldn't
say you were coming down in a particular spot," said Dolly. "You had
to go where the wind took you. I've been on top of a chimney, over trees."
One time she nearly landed on top of an express train. "That driver—he had
some forethought and blew the steam and just blew me off into the canal at
Bantham. Ah, yes, that was quite a nice time," recalled Dolly.
She saw one
girl fall to her death when she landed on top of the roof of a factory only to be dragged over its precipice by her parachute.
Why did
Dolly like parachuting? She supposedly once remarked that if she had to die,
she wanted it to be from a high altitude. "I'd like to be killed
completely—good and proper!" she said.
Not
surprisingly, she herself nearly did almost get killed completely on at least two occasions. One
time, the balloon rose out of control. To make matters worse, she could not get
her parachute to detach. The air grew colder and the oxygen thinner until finally
at 15,000 or even 18,000 feet she leapt
to safety.
A massive electric shock
In 1908 she
was doing a dual jump. The other girl's parachute tangled and would not detach
from the balloon. Dolly wrenched the girl out of her harness and commanded her
to wrap her legs and arms around her.
That became
the world's first tandem parachute jump. Because Dolly's parachute was only
designed for one person, they fell far too fast. When they hit the ground,
Dolly impacted first, and the other girl landed on top of her. The result? She became paralyzed. To cure her, a doctor thought that giving her a massive electric
shock would be just the thing. It worked.
For this
amazing rescue, Dolly won a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
While she
recuperated, it's said that her mother did the jumps for her—pretending to be
her. Dolly's aerial adventures ended one day when an eerie voice in her head said,
"Don't come up again, or you'll be killed." Consequently, she took up
a safer occupation. She went to France during World War I and became a truck
mechanic and driver. She died peacefully at the age of 96.
Thrill
seeking runs in the Shepherd family. To honor her mother, her daughter Molly
Sedgwick did a parachute jump on her 83rd birthday. It was her fifth. "I
thoroughly enjoyed it before, and each time it has been a thrill and a
wonderful experience," she said.
MORAL: Take a flying leap.
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