That daring young man

No one can really know.

By JOHN STANG

The Daily inter Lake

His family says Joel Atkinson was a risk taker.

But when flying, the expert parachutist always put safety first.

But each of Joel Atkinson's parents has the same mental image of his life's last few seconds - telling a scared rookie parachutist that everything will be all right.

That image fits Joel's character as described by his family - calm under pressure, empathic toward others.

"Skydiving was his great passion," said his aunt Becky Shay of Billings.

Joel Atkinson, 25, of Whitefish was a tandem-jump instructor who died with four others Saturday morning when their Cessna 182-C crashed while trying to make an apparent emergency landing on the Skydive Lost Prairie runway west of Marion.

The others were:

. Pilot Troy Norling, 28. He moved a couple of weeks ago from Onalaska, Wis., to Flathead County in response to an Internet advertisement to become Lost Prairie's only full-time pilot among a a group of part-time pilots during the skydiving school's busy season. He had more than 500 hours of flight time, and projected competence and an eagerness to learn, said Lost Prairie owner Fred Sand.

. Tandem-jump instructor David Landeck Jr., 25, of Missoula. The U.S. Army reservist and Iraq War veteran was a married dental science student at the University of Montana. He was working his second summer as an instructor at Lost Prairie.

. Novice jumpers and sweethearts Kyle Mills, 31, and Jenny Sengpiel, 25, both of Great Falls. He played French horn, and she played oboe in the Great Falls Symphony Orchestra. They planned to get married.

"Five families are grieving right now. Our thoughts and prayers are with the other families, and with Fred Sand," Becky said.

Joel was the second of two sons of Jim Atkinson of Kalispell and Gail Linne of Columbia Falls.

He lived and marched to a different hard-to-pigeonhole drummer.

"He was a daredevil and safety-conscious all at once. He was respectful and a hellion all at once," Jim said.

Gail said: "He was complex."

Joel was the type of kid who would split the kitchen-cleanup chores with his older brother, Wade - now 27 - with Wade handling the floor and Joel taking care of the table. After nailing down the deal with Wade, Joel then swept everything off the table onto the floor.

As a child, he decided always to wear mismatched socks - keeping that habit for his entire life.

Joel wasn't into organized activities in high school. He drifted and dabbled.

Skateboarding. Biking. Playing drums and later guitar in a garage band. Beginning a lifetime of smoking Marlboros - a habit he quit several times.

He grew up to become a 6-foot-2-inch, deceptively muscular 155-pound blond, typically wearing an infectious grin, along with dreamy blue eyes and eyelashes that fascinated many women.

He also got bored with Flathead High School and dropped out during his junior year. He attended General Educational Development classes for a couple of weeks, got bored again, and took the GED test - passing with an extremely high score.

Compulsively polite, Joel was also the type of kid who felt bad for embarrassing his parents when he and a buddy shot out a window with a BB gun.

Unknown to his parents, a friend got Joel interested in skydiving during his early teens.

When Joel turned 18, he convinced Jim and Gail to let him try skydiving at Lost Prairie as a birthday present.

Sand thinks he might have been Joel's and David Landeck's instructor for their first jumps at separate times.

That first jump triggered something within Joel.

The initial adrenaline rush. The following soothing calm from a sky-high view of Montana's blue and green scenery. A fascination with skydiving's science and mechanics. The buzz of needing to think quickly under pressure.

And Joel was a bit of a showboat - thrilled at doing something well that most are afraid to do.

Joel found his life's calling.

"He took this strong passion and kept building and building it into something deeper," Gail said.

Lost Prairie became his second home. Fred Sand became a new father figure. Skydiving brought many new friends.

Joel obtained a U.S. Parachute Association D license, which essentially declared him an expert parachutist. That required 500 jumps, plus demonstrating specific skills in landing and control-during-free fall. It took him awhile to master backflips.

He mixed being a risk-taker and being safety-conscious - always brainstorming potential mishaps to figure out what to do in an emergency.

He couldn't wait for his first malfunction to happen, Jim said. "He was tinkled pink after his first malfunction. He did everything right."

Joel worked at Lost Prairie during the sunny months and roamed elsewhere during Montana's cold winters, which he hated.

The drop-zone bum worked at and participated in parachuting events in Puerto Rico, Florida, Arizona, Utah, California and Alaska. He worked odd jobs to supplement his parachuting income. His last nonparachuting job was delivering pizzas.

Meanwhile, he worked his way up to a more difficult level of skydiving - being a tandem-jumping instructor.

In tandem jumping, a novice is strapped to an expert parachutist, and they skydive as a pair with one parachute.

Besides mastering jumping with another person attached to him, Joel's natural friendliness and patience helped him bond with each of his students.

Gail said: "He never knew a stranger and never forgot a friend."

Joel fed off each student's first-jump excitement. And he radiated vibes of wonder and anticipation to his students, along with a feeling of security, Sand and others said.

"Joel knew when he took someone out, it was an life-altering thing," Becky said. He would take time after a tandem jump to congratulate the novice and to relive the thrills for that person.

Joel tandem-jumped with a paraplegic, an 80-year-old woman, an ESPN reporter, and a girl who threw up on him in mid-air.

Once, he tandem-jumped with a woman whose body got out of position - sending the pair into a tight, downward free-fall spiral that threatened to make him lose consciousness. Somehow, Joel hung on, worked out of the spiral and landed safely. On the inside, he was spooked for a while. But on the outside, he calmly consoled his tandem partner.

Meanwhile, Joel flirted with the idea of going to college to earn a Master of Business Administration degree. He solidified his own type of relationship with God. He began writing his thoughts in a journal.

Friends and family saw Joel mature - especially as a jump instructor - in recent years.

Sort off.

In recent years, Joel also gave Jim a video of him leaping from the hood of a speeding car into the back of a pickup.

This year, Joel was getting ready to tackle jumping with a video camera fastened to his head to record other skydivers in the air.

This would force him to improve his skydiving skills.

He would have to free fall to a precise spot in mid-air to videotape another skydiver in focus with no jiggling of the picture. This also has to be done with an artist's eye - avoiding the sun while framing shots with the clouds and landscapes in the background.

Joel never got a chance to develop those new skills.

He had about 1,400 jumps under his belt when Joel and the other four took off in a Lost Prairie Cessna at about 10:10 a.m. on a calm, sunny Saturday. No one knows whether he was paired with Kyle or Jenny.

The plane lifted off the northern end of Lost Prairie's hardtop runway and immediately circled back to try to land on the southern end of the runway. The plane crashed about 150 feet short of the runway. The planes wings and front burned up. All that remained was a banged-up tail section.

Federal investigators don't have a theory about why the crash occurred. A National Transportation Safety Board report is expected in about nine months.

Meanwhile, Wade is scheduled to be married May 30. Joel was to be the best man.

Joel, Wade and their buddies recently went to Vancouver, British Columbia, for the bachelor party.

Wade doesn't drink alcohol and is somewhat of a straight arrow.

That didn't stop Joel, Jim said.

Instead of Wade bonging beer, Joel whipped out the funnel and tube to pour scandalous amounts of Mountain Dew down his brother's throat.

And when the wedding takes place, there will be an open spot for the best man - honoring the missing friend, son, brother and loved one.