ZEPHYRHILLS, Fla. — Retired Army veteran Alex Dillmann, a Tampa-born native, is commemorating his 15th Alive Day on Friday by skydiving at Skydive City in Zephyrhills.
The wounded combat veteran is also paying tribute to a good friend from his unit who lost his life on Feb. 27, 2011, Christopher James Gould.
Dillman was born in Tampa, graduated from Leto High School and currently works for SOCOM at MacDill Air Force Base.
What You Need To Know
Alex Dillman is commemorating his ‘Alive Day’ on Feb. 27 marking 15 years since he survived an IED blast in Afghanistan
The retired Purple Heart Army Veteran is now a Class B certified skydiver
He is skydiving on the 15 year anniversary at Skydive City in Zephyrhills
Spectrum News met up with Alex at Skydive City as he prepared for a jump.
Well before he even got to the point of skydiving, his story already inspired.
“No matter the operation or a mission, there’s always a process where you check your gear, right,” he said as he fastened his leg brace used for skydiving.
No amount of preparation could prepare him for what happened 15 years ago.
Dillman was on his second deployment to Afghanistan when the lead armored vehicle he and four other soldiers were in ran over an IED while conducting a night patrol, killing Gould and severely wounding three others, including Dillman.
The most devastating of the injuries were the burst fractures to his spine, resulting in paralysis from the mid-chest down.
But, the life-changing event 15 years ago also motivated him.
“It really helped me not take life for granted and to soak up every bit I can,” he said. “I still had the thirst for life; I just hadn’t found that one activity that scratched that itch. So, in 2015, the bug kind of hit my ear. There’s a place in Zephyrhills; Skydive City let’s check it out.”
He jumped at the opportunity.
Attached to someone at first.
“At first I was a little apprehensive obviously because I didn’t jump out of planes when I was in the military,” he said. “So, this was my first time jumping out of a plane. Once I got out here and saw the plane, I saw the people parashooting down from the sky down to the earth right in front of my face, you know what…this is a thing.”
He jumped again.
And again.
And soon after came another idea.
“One of the cameramen slash instructors…said Hey I think you can do this on your own,” said Dillman.
The videographer and safety advisor at Skydive City who suggested Dillman take another leap in his skydiving journey is Chris Stubbs.
“I think he was ready for it,” Stubbs said. “He jumped right into it.”
He said the teamwork he experienced with his skydiving trainers, instructors and teammates was remarkably familiar.
“There’s not a lot of things in life that can kind of create that,” he said.
The Purple Heart Veteran, however, needed the right gear because Dillman said he cannot do it physically without adaptive equipment.
So, he created a leg brace for himself that would allow him to skydive on his own.
And he learned at an incredible pace.
“I took eight years to get the license he got in a year,” said Stubbs about Dillman.
In 2015, he obtained his A license and completed jumps without the use of his legs.
“And once I graduated, I fell in with the community and I hate to say the sky’s the limit but there’s plenty of people to bring you in to do jumps and now you’re in a big party,” Alex said.
Dillman has celebrated more than 270 jumps by now with his new community embracing him.
“You know I hear a lot from people…how great it is that I helped do this for him, and it’s the exact opposite,” Stubbs said.
The skydiving community is already small.
Not many people in the world can do it.
Dillman skydives as a paraplegic, which puts him in an even smaller group of pros.
He has had wonderful opportunities since becoming a professional skydiver.
Last summer, he was part of a group that landed on Omaha Beach to commemorate the 81st Anniversary of the D-day invasion landings.
Other opportunities include jumping with the Golden Knights which is the United States Army’s premier skydiving team.
Dillman still looks back at what happened 15 years ago on February 27.
“Especially on the anniversary, naturally I think more about the events of the night that I was injured,” he said. “But a lot’s happened since then.”
His wife Holly joined him in jumps.
He has a son now and wants him to go skydiving one day too.
Dillman said he found healing.
“And that helps me out because now I’m part of a team and now I’m back in that team mentality, just like I was in the military,” he said. “You have a thing you’re supposed to do, and other people are depending on that. And to have that feeling again, I can’t describe it…to be able to be depended on in such a way.”