Michael O'Daniel

If you wanted to learn powered paragliding in Northern Virginia, everyone sent you to Michael O'Daniel. Most of the PPG pilots in Club 1 learned from Michael. The big picture below shows him demonstrating a PPG rig at an airport day at New Market in 2009. It was a small event, but that didn't matter. He was always willing to show up to promote the sport.

Then, after you learned, if you wanted someone to fly with or someplace to fly to, he was your man. In the early days, he and Ami Abramson flew from Front Royal to Woodstock, 17 miles over the mountains. Then, pushing it, from Front Royal to the Airpark, 31 miles through the Chester Gap with a 30mph tailwind, going faster than he'd probably ever gone in a PPG. Seven PPG pilots planned to make that trip, but five looked at the forecast and never showed. Michael and Ami took their chances, the weather broke, and they got their adventure. Typical Michael.

That was just the warm-up. He began flying and organizing PPG trips abroad.

• He teamed up with Jeff Hamann, Phil Russman and Jeff Goin on a trip to Baja Mexico where the popular, adventure movie Why We Fly was created.
• He particicpated in the record flight across the Panama Canal, taking off on the Carribbean coast and landing on the Pacific coast. The flight was a fund raiser for children with cancer.
• He toured Costa Rica and the pacific coast of Mexico and made several trips to Peru paramotoring and free flying.

His last trip was to Colombia with a group of friends. Wrote one, “He was all smiles as he always was on these trips and we were laughing a lot. We started the trip from Medellin with plans to drive to Cali to fly many sites along the way — Michael’s favorite way of doing paragliding trips.” He loved the community and the storytelling they all do.

Several pilots were thermalling up a cliff face. They all made it up and over except Michael. The guess is that he was turning/thermalling too close to the ridge and misjudged a turn or lost lift. Either way, his wing clipped a tree. Once the wing caught tree branches, it caused him to swing into the cliff, sustaining fatal injuries. He was 66. He was survived by a wife, a grown daughter, and many, many well-wishers whose lives he had enriched.