PEPPERELL — For the vast majority of people who get onto an airplane, they will experience the exact same number of takeoffs and landings.
For three generations of the Silvia family, they have taken off in planes thousands of times, but they have experienced far fewer landings from inside the aircraft.
Justin Silvia and his son, Joe Silvia, have both made lifelong careers out of skydiving. Each of them has logged thousands of jumps across their respective careers, with both now running their own skydiving companies in different parts of the country.
Justin runs Chattanooga Skydiving Company in Tennessee, while Joe owns Skydive Pepperell more locally. On Saturday, which is World Skydiving Day, both of them plan to be among the tens of thousands of people worldwide working to break the world record for most skydives in a single day. The number to beat is 30,351 jumps, which was set on World Skydiving Day in 2024.
The Silvia family’s tradition of parachuting out of airplanes began not as a thrill-seeking venture, but as a duty held by Justin’s father, Vin Silvia, who served in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division during World War II.
“We grew up around a lot of guys that jumped into France,” said Justin, referring to the initial Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944 during World War II, an operation the 82nd Airborne played a heavy role in.
The war concluded the following year, but Vin hadn’t made his final jump out of a plane. In 1960, Justin said his father took the skills he had earned from the 82nd Airborne and began his career in skydiving. Justin grew up around that crowd, but at 16 he said he and his father became estranged, and he moved out and later got a job as a machinist.
It wasn’t until he was 22 that Justin made his first jump, which he did after his brother, Frank Silvia, invited him to do so up in Pepperell. Frank had started skydiving when he was 15, and by 1984 when he asked Justin to do a jump, he had logged more than 1,000 jumps of his own.
“I went there that day, June 17, 1984, with my future wife … She waited out in the packing area in the field while I did the class, and I never left airports again,” said Justin.
Justin recalls the situation being somewhat emotional from the tensions with his father, but that there was a level of familiarity, too, since he had grown up around the hobby.
“They opened the door and I could smell the burning fuel, which I remembered from when I was a kid,” said Justin.
Since that day, Justin has made roughly 14,500 jumps.
“It has been a very fulfilling life. When you find something you enjoy and you can turn it into your business, you will never work a day in your life,” said Justin.
The Silvia family would move around the country over the years. Justin took up a job filming tandem jumpers in Zephyrhills, Florida, where Joe would eventually be born. For a time, Justin continued working as a machinist during the week and jumping on the weekends, but in 1992 he committed to skydiving and opened his first jump center in Arcadia, Florida, in 1992.
After stints back in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the Silvias found themselves in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Justin would open his current jump center out of an airport in nearby Jasper.
Joe began his skydiving journey a bit earlier in life than his father. Now 38, Joe grew up around the hobby, much the way his own father had. When Joe was 10, he was deemed big enough to pack parachutes for other jumpers. When he was just 12 he made his first jump. He said he was nervous, but perhaps less so because of how familiar the whole thing was to him.
Since that day, Joe has logged more than 15,000 jumps, including many he has done as the owner of Skydive Pepperell. In 2019 he got his private pilot license, followed by a commercial pilot license in 2022, allowing him to be the pilot for other people making jumps.
Skydiving is an activity that can bring natural anxiety to many people, but by Joe’s observation, people tend not to regret going through with it.
“When people decide to go skydiving, they want to do it for themselves. They are more determined to conquer that fear than anything else,” said Joe.
To date, and after thousands of jumps, Joe said he has only ever seen three people back out of their jump.
Justin and Joe will be among thousands of people falling from the sky across the globe Saturday, all with parachutes strapped to their backs, of course. To break the 2024 jump record, Joe said the strategy in Pepperell will be simple.
“We are going to skydive as much as we can. We have a lot of sport jumpers coming out who will build formations. We will have our fair share of first-timers and tandems,” said Joe. “We are just going to be skydiving all day.”
The father-son pair have their bases of operation in different parts of the country from each other, but Joe spoke highly of his father’s commitment to the sport even at 64.
“I think it is so cool that he is in his 60s and still doing it, still showing up for it, and we get to share it together,” said Joe.
Both men recommended that everybody should partake in skydiving, even just once.
“I think 99.9% of people have all of these preconceived notions about what it is like. They ask the same questions. ‘Do you feel the rollercoaster feeling in your stomach? Is it really cold up there?’ After they do it, 99% say it wasn’t anything like they imagined,” said Justin. “I shouldn’t be telling people what the experience is. They just have to experience it … I’ve done this for 43 years now. It is a great love story.”
“Experience it. It is a lot of fun, it is very freeing and the community is very nice,” said Joe.
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