NYT Jan 16 1983 – Joseph Svec of Houston, a veteran stunt man and parachutist, was killed Friday when he failed to pull his ripcords during the filming of a movie scene. Bob Phelps, manager of the California City Airport, said that the jump was going as planned and that a later examination showed nothing wrong with the 35-year-old stunt man’s parachutes. The sequence being filmed for ”The Right Stuff,” based on the book by Tom Wolfe, depicted a fighter pilot ejecting from an experimental plane.
In Memoriam