Peace Corps volunteer keeps promise to Nannie

West Orange Times & Observer
News

Two years after making a pact to go skydiving together, Nicholas Marotta and his grandmother, 85-year-old Judy Patrizzi, fulfilled their promise last month.

Marotta, of Ocoee, and Summerport resident Patrizzi made plans to jump out of an airplane to celebrate his return from his 24-month stint as a volunteer with the Peace Corps in Madagascar. They jokingly discussed the adventure before he left for the east African country.

“Before I got back, we had some phone calls where it was mentioned jokingly,” Marotta said. “When I got back, we had a powwow and we decided it was the real deal and we’re doing it.”

Patrizzi agreed to go through with it.

“When he got back, I said, ‘I have to do this, even though it wasn’t my heart’s desire,’” she said.

For their first-time adventure, they went to Skydive Space Center in Titusville. They chose Friday, Dec. 13, as their jumping day.

Marotta said the 18,000-foot jump is the world’s highest tandem skydive jump. The whole experience took less than 15 minutes, and about two-thirds of it was soaring in slow motion underneath the opened parachute.

“If you’re going to skydive for the first time at the world’s highest jump, you might as well do it on Friday the 13th,” Marotta said.

“I was surprisingly calm for the weeks leading up to it,” Patrizzi said. “The only time I started to feel real fear was when we were in the plane and it was almost time to jump and my heart started to pound a little bit. I had confidence in the instructor.”

Patrizzi was the first one to jump out of the plane with her instructor.

“He turned me upside a couple times; I wasn’t expecting that,” she said. “The wind was cold, it was loud. Once we gout of the plane, I wasn’t scared. And then when the parachute opened up, it was nice and slow and he let me hold the handles and steer to the left and to the right and then I let him take over.

“When you’re coming down for the landing, it feels like you’re going really fast,” Patrizzi said. “When we landed, he landed on his feet and I didn’t have to.”

Marotta said it was surreal watching his grandmother jump first.

“It looked like she was just swept away in the wind like nothing,” he said. “It was incredible how quickly she disappeared.”

For Marotta’s jump, the experience was “incredible, truly unbelievable and fabulous,” he said.

“I also felt surprisingly calm. I told my friends … I’m going to jump out of an airplane, and every time I wasn’t scared. … I was so excited to do it with my Nannie.”

His instructor has jumped more than 14,000 times, Marotta said, so he had confidence in the experience.

“We got onto the airplane and …I watched out the window as we climbed higher and higher, and I stayed calm,” he said. “And then I started wondering, ‘Will I put my arms and legs in the right place?’ He never told me anything about landing. … We were about to jump, and we were at elevation. My instructor told me, ‘I’ll tell you how to land after the parachute comes out because if it doesn’t come out, we don’t have to worry about that.’”

At about 3,000 feet, as he was freefalling through the clouds, he felt the wind rushing and the cold stinging his face. He likened it to being shot out of a cannon.

“And then we came out the other side, and our parachutes opened,” he said. “The instructor … was very relaxed and focused on getting me to do these cool hand signals for the cameras.”

The landing happened without a hitch, he said.

“When we landed, we still had our harnesses on, and Nannie said, ‘What’s our next adventure?’” Marotta said.

ADVENTUROUS NANNIE

Patrizzi is known for her adventurous spirit. She and Gene, her husband of 62 years, participate in an exercise program three times per week, and she frequently goes on excursions with her six grandchildren.

When the Patrizzis lived in Connecticut, the grandchildren visited twice each year, and when they were tucked into their sleeping bags, Nannie told them stories of grand adventures. As they grew older, she took them on their own adventures.

She has gone ziplining with all six of them at the Sanford Zoo, and has gone rock climbing with them, too.

Patrizzi’s next experience is taking four of her grandchildren to New York City.

“We usually have a big celebration at Christmas; we don’t have just one day during the holiday,” she said. “We have pie-making day, preparation day, a scavenger hunt, we have Christmas Day and then leftover day. At least four days.”

Will she ever go skydiving again?

“I think both of us would,” Patrizzi and Marotta agreed.

VOLUNTEERING IN MADAGASCAR

Two years ago, Nicholas Marotta was preparing for his Peace Corps assignment, and he wasn’t sure what to expect.

He ended up in the Highlands, the central mountainous region of the country, teaching English to middle-schoolers. He lived in a tiny rural town — which was a brutal six-hour taxi ride to the nearest town with a bank, he said — where he fetched his own water from a 25-meter-deep well, hand-washed his laundry and cooked from scratch all of his meals.

“Without all of those tools for efficiency, life slowed way down and then there was — other than chores and staying alive and my work as a teacher — I was also, of course, so focused on trying to communicate with people,” Marotta said. “One of the biggest joys of the Peace Corps service was learning Malagasy. It was such a wonderful experience. Basically, I would carry this little notebook and ask people questions constantly.”

He gained a pretty solid proficiency in the Malagasy language, and it was a rewarding process, he said. The school at which he worked had limited resources, no electricity and bare-bones furniture.

Aside from his teaching assignment, Marotta’s other big project was writing a grant request and receiving funding for the installation of windows at the school. He and his students made a video, and the children explained the problem.

“This problem became clear in the time I was teaching there,” he said. “In the mountains it was cold, and the kids were shivering in the winter. And in the summer, the torrential downpours were loud and the kids couldn’t hear me teach. The problem was solved simply by adding windows.”

Marotta said he would consider another Peace Corps assignment later in life. For now, he is ready to put down roots. He has accepted a position as a vegetation management inspector in California, and he will walk through the forests in the northern portion of the state checking power lines and making sure the trees are healthy and aren’t growing too close to the lines.

“It’s really exciting for me because I get to stay active and engage with the community and … basically, keep connected to the environment there.”

author

Amy Quesinberry Price

Community Editor Amy Quesinberry Price was born at the old West Orange Memorial Hospital and raised in Winter Garden. Aside from earning her journalism degree from the University of Georgia, she hasn’t strayed too far from her hometown and her three-mile bubble. She grew up reading The Winter Garden Times and knew in the eighth grade she wanted to write for her community newspaper. She has been part of the writing and editing team since 1990.