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March 1999 will go down in history - not just in the FAI's books - as the month of Piccard and Jones. Their epic round the world balloon flight was front page news for days on end in Lausanne - Bertrand Piccard's home town - and around the globe. I was lucky enough to be present, on behalf of FAI, both at the launch of the Breitling Orbiter 3 and at the Geneva Airport ceremony on 22 March to welcome the heroes home. Their flight has given rise to an extraordinary and pervading sense of optimism in Switzerland. They have shown that it is possible to win the battle against scepticism and adversity, and to have genuine adventures even in today's sanitised and homogeneous world. People respond to this, and air sport has received a most welcome flip. The spirit and courage shown by Piccard and Jones can also be manifested in very different ways. From time to time a person strides across the FAI stage who carries a special aura, whose contribution to our activities was so far-reaching that no written account can really do him justice. Such a person was Dr Uwe Beckmann who died on 26 March after a long illness, and whose funeral I attended on behalf of all his many friends in the FAI. I can do no better than to quote from the moving tribute made to him at the funeral by his successor as President of the FAI Olympic Coordinating Committee, Roland Hilfiker. "Parachuting has produced very few personalities, who have set completely new standards for the sport's future. Uwe Beckmann was one of them. He had the charisma. He had the initiative. And he had the vision.... For many years, he was the German Delegate to the International Parachuting Commission of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. He served as the Commission's President between 1983 and 1991, longer than any other president before him. He sought and obtained the recognition of air sports by the International Olympic Committee, single-handedly, thus enabling parachuting to make its first official appearance during Olympic Games. On September 17, 1988, close to 100 parachutists from thirty different countries participated in the Opening Ceremony of the 24th Olympiad in Seoul, Korea. Uwe Beckmann's initiative, drive and perseverance had brought them there." Since then, Uwe Beckmannn had spared no effort to promote the FAI in the wider sporting world. He died of ALS, "Lou Gehrig's Disease". Until near the end, before succumbing to the progressive paralysis of his entire body, he had kept up an exchange of email correspondence with many parachuting friends and with the FAI Office. Using his remaining mobility, in one finger of one hand he typed the following instructions to the mourners at his funeral: "Please, accompany me to the cemetery with a smile!" Entirely characteristic of the Uwe Beckmann so many people in the FAI knew and respected. We need more like him.
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