posted Jun 17th, 2011 - The NSL News gave one of the legends of Formation Skydiving competition, Jerry Bird, a lot of attention last year. It was no surprise that World Team leader BJ Worth was usually somehow a part of the same stories, as both spent quite some time together in the earlier years of Formation Skydiving competition.

BJ Worth organized the 50-way jumps at the 50-year anniversary of the unique high-altitude jump that Joseph Kittinger did in 1960. It was the same event in August in DeLand where former 8-way world champion Jerry Bird accepted the honor to represent the FS competitors in the National Skydiving Museum's Hall of Fame.

The next event with Jerry Bird happened without BJ Worth. The NSL News made a trip to Skydive City where Jerry Bird fans and friends hosted an event in November that was inviting skydivers to "Jerry Bird's Life Tour". Jerry Bird was busy organizing hundreds of T-shirts he had collected over the 47 years of jumping to give them away to registered participants of the event. He eventually took a few minutes to honor the NSL News with his unique voice in front of the NSL-TV camera.

Two weeks later, Jerry Bird became a topic of the conversation between BJ Worth and the NSL News during SkyQuest 2010. BJ Worth answered NSL News questions about his skydiving career and explained that he attended his first World Cup of Formation Skydiving in 1974. His 10-way Speed Star team, Wings of Orange, won the gold medals. Jerry Bird was the team captain.

It took another six months until Jerry Bird and BJ Worth eventually appeared once again at the same time and at the same place. BJ Worth had made the NSL News a few times in the meantime, as he was organizing the Flight of the Phoenix in April in DeLand and announced the new 444-way world record attempt of the World Team. The location of the new meeting was the same as in August 2010, Skydive DeLand.

This time, Jerry Bird visited to receive the 2011 gold medal of the Stefan Banic Parachute Foundation, and BJ Worth was in charge to present the medal. The NSL News saw the opportunity to engage both skydiving legends in a conversation together, and both accepted the invitation.

The video offers some glimpses into the times that Jerry Bird and BJ Worth had spent together. However, it was also an opportunity to learn more about the sponsor of the award who is a passionate skydiver himself. BJ Worth even gave Stefan Banic credit for actually founding the World Team:

"On a separate note, I credit Slavo with starting World Team - as he was the one who invited me to organize a world record formation at an air show in Bratislava in 1994. We built a 216-way there, with one person out, so it was only a Guinness Book world record, not an FAI world record."

Stefan Banic is a native of the Republic of Slovakia. He is credited with inventing the parachute. He received a patent for the parachute in 1914 and donated his patent to the US Army. Then he started his own Parachute Foundation as a way to pay tribute to the Republic of Slovakia and to recognize the contributions the award recipients have made to the sport.

Each year, the Stefan Banic Parachute Foundation awards gold, silver, bronze medals and special certificates for contributions to the sport, a gold medal for 25 or more years, two silver medals for 20 or more years and three bronze medals for 15 or more years.

BJ Worth presented the annual gold medal to Jerry Bird in DeLand last weekend. Freefall camera artist Norman Kent received one of the silver medals on the same day, and Skydive DeLand owner Bob Hallett is the second silver medalist. It made sense for BJ Worth to make the trip to Florida, as all recepients live in the same state and area.

This story wraps up last weekend's events in a different way. New scores and information of this weekend will follow very soon.