“She wanted other people to know that you could dream and become whatever you wanted to be,’’ said her ex-husband, Kirk Wicker, who on occasion piloted the plane as she walked the wing. “All you had to have was that want and desire to do it.’’
Jane Wicker, 44, was killed last month along with pilot Charlie Schwenker in a horrifying crash as she performed on the wing of her Aurora biplane at the Vectren Dayton Air Show. In full view of scores of spectators, the Aurora slammed into the ground and exploded into yellow flames, instantly killing Wicker and Schwenker.
Rather than holding a traditional memorial service in a church, Wicker’s friends and relatives opted for an event at the Flying Circus Airshow complete with its seven vintage Boeing-Stearman biplanes from the 1930s and a large sign cheerfully proclaiming, “Rides That Last A Lifetime – Biplane Rides.’’
The ceremony opened with the roar overhead of four single-engined Beechcraft Bonanzas and a twin-engined Beechcraft Baron. And it concluded with one last flyover, a stunt woman performing a wing-walk, and the scattering of Wicker’s ashes across the airfield.
In between the flyovers and the wing walking, the crowd laughed a lot and cried a bit as Kirk Wicker; Jane’s sister Elizabeth, and her fiancé Rock Skowbo talked about Jane’s determination to be a wingwalker, a hazardous profession that often prompted perfect strangers to ask in jest if she were crazy.
Elizabeth, who everyone at the event said looked so much like Jane, said her sister was “fearless’’ and “took risks,’’ but insisted she “wasn’t reckless.’’ She said Jane was inspired by her parents who “taught us to believe in a life of no limitations.’’
Skowbo, who had planned to be married next year to Jane as the two walked on the wings of the Aurora, read a short poem he composed a week ago called, “My wing woman.’’
And Kirk Wicker, who struggled to fight back tears, joked that Jane had met both him and Skowbo at this airfield about 60 miles from Washington, telling the crowd, “Apparently this is where she picked all her husbands.’’
“She had one of those infectious personalities,’’ Wicker said. “But more than anything, she was a performer — a professional performer.’’
About the Author