"Sugar Alpha"
Joy got me the book by Mellisa and Roger Nelson, (FB#2) entitled, "Sugar Alpha" after a neat old DC 3 that used to be around the skydiving and "other" circuit in the early 80's. I grew up skydiving in the midwest. My twin brother Randy and I met Roger and his brother Carl in 73 and joined freak brothers by getting stoned with FB 1, 2 and 3, a friend we called "Cicero" and jumped at Hinckley quite a bit in the 70's and even at the conventions in the 80's. My favorite skydiving times and tales were from Hinckley from 73 to 77, with one great RW summer out of an old Loadstar in Belveder, IL. Roger was always one of the spark plugs to get the best loads going, even back then. Talked to Roger once, a year before he died when I called the DZ to give a guy his BASE number who worked at the DZ. Roger answered and we spoke for a few minutes since I hadn't talked to him in over 15 years. Anyway, the book, Sugar Alpha, was a really good read. It is from Roger's memoirs while in Prison and his daughter, Melissa, putting it together with a little editing help from Robin Heid. I just wanted to say that after reading it, I was impressed at the writing and all of the stories about Roger's character. The story goes from skydiving to smuggling and ties the two together in Roger's mind and personality. The story reads like a good novel jumping from one aspect to the other and is never boring. My kudos to Melissa for her work. I also want to say hi to Jeannie and Rook. Even at Hinckley, Jeannie was a favorite, sweet and strong. The kids were small last time I saw them and sounds like Melissa has even embraced our dark side of BASE jumping. Great book Melissa. Rick Harrison
FB 97
BASE 38