Community Corner

It's a Bird, It's a Plane ... It's Mom!

Jane Wicker, mother and budget analyst, dusts off her alter ego to walk on wings Sunday for the Aerobatic Air Show in Ocean City.

Jane Wicker will make her first visit to the in Ocean City on Sunday, and she'll have a unique view.

As one of the featured acts, Wicker will watch the beach and Boardwalk zoom by from the wing of a biplane, where she'll hang upside down and do other tricks—all while the plane does a few maneuvers of its own.

The veteran "wing walker," who performs without a safety line or parachute, revives the era of barnstormers when pilots tried to outdo each other with new and more daring stunts. Wicker is one of 12 acts in a two-hour air show over the ocean off downtown Ocean City from 1 to 3 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 18.

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But for the 44-year-old mother, the real danger (or at least the real challenge) lies back at home near Manassas, VA, in the form of two teenage children and a commute to a desk job in Washington, D.C.

Days that start before dawn, a long commute to a 9-to-5 job as a budget analyst for the Federal Aviation Administration, where "basically I crunch numbers," and the responsibilities of raising a 14- and 16-year-old make wing walking seem like a breeze.

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"When I'm at home on the ground, it's nonstop from 4 in the morning to 10 at night," Wicker said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

"In the air, it's almost become second nature to me," she said of wing walking. "I feel safer up there than on the ground with all the crazy people."

She said wing walking has become more exciting to her over the years. Unlike in the early years when she had to be completely focused on learning the safety skills of the endeavor, she can now have fun with it.

"I can actually look around and enjoy the scenery," she said.

Wicker was already taking flight lessons, and had watched a wing walker at an air show when she answered a classified ad in The Washington Post in 1990. "Wing Walker Wanted" the Flying Circus Airshow in Bealeton, VA, advertised.

She met her former husband at the audition, and the pair performed together for 12 years. Wicker now performs on her own 450 HP Stearman biplane, which will be piloted on Sunday by Bill Gordon, a veteran who will also be flying with the Iron Eagle Aerobatic Team.

Wicker's act is scheduled toward the end of the air show—tentatively at 2:36 p.m.

At one point in her routine, Wicker will hang upside down by her legs from the wing of the plane. She will continue to hang as the airplane rolls leaving her sitting upright on the bottom of the upside-down airplane.

It's all in a day's work for Wicker, who does 10 to 15 shows per year.

She said whatever compensation she gets pays only for the the expenses of her plane.

"I do it for the love of it," Wicker said.



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