The sky's the limit: skydiving in support of the ADA

CHIPPEWA FALLS — “I don’t know if I’m brave or crazy,” Renee Kuester-Sebranek asked herself. After the fact, her answer is: “Both?”

Kuester-Sebranek has led a life full of adventure. “I’m fortunate to travel the world and to do a lot of crazy stuff,” she said. Indeed, Kuester-Sebranek has not been a stranger to activities like white water canoeing and zip-lining, so her decision to skydive for the first time to celebrate her 60th birthday didn’t come as much of a surprise to those around her. What makes her stand out among others choosing the activity, though, is that she is also totally blind.

Her birthday is also close to what she feels is an important milestone in our country: almost 34 years ago, the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed. The act prohibits employment discrimination due to a disability.

The ADA is important to Kuester-Sebranek, who is a leader for the Chippewa Valley Visually Impaired Persons Support Group. She has wanted to show others that something like blindness is no barrier to leading a happy and fulfilling life.

“LIKE A GRIEVING PROCESS”

Kuester-Sebranek started having vision problems at the age of 17, when bone spicules were noticed in her eyes.

“They said I had retinitis pigmentosa, which is a hereditary eye disorder where you’ll lose your peripheral vision. And they said I would probably be blind by the time I was 40. And of course I’m like: they’re wrong, right? That ain’t gonna happen to me,” she said.

What followed was a series of eye-related issues: uveitis, partially detached retinas, secondary glaucoma, and even phthisis (the shrinking of one of her eyes). She had seen multiple doctors and had multiple surgeries.

“My eyes are stable now, and still in my head, which is good,” she said with a laugh.

Her vision, though, continued to degrade until, one night, driving home was nearly impossible, requiring her to roll her window down to listen for cars. Her husband was in the passenger seat and helped her get home safely, but her car went up for sale the next day. She then made a low-vision appointment.

“I was legally blind for about five years and then I’ve been totally blind for 13, and I haven’t driven since I was almost 41,” she said.

Though she was open with her husband about the likeliness of the loss of her eyesight from the start, Kuester-Sebranek said that it was still a rough initial transition.

“It’s hard on the person and their significant others because they’re both going through the kind of the same thing. Because when people go through blindness, it’s like a grieving process,” she said. “It’s the death of your sight; you go through the same grieving process as the death of a person.”

NO OBSTACLES

Kuester-Sebranek admitted that going blind was a “hard pill to swallow,” she said with a laugh. She added that “I didn’t want anything to do with the stupid white cane because that would cramp my style.”

She went ahead with training, which she said “opened doors” for her. She eventually finished enough independence proficiency training with a cane in order to qualify for a guide dog, who has been in her life for years since.

For her, life has just started. Almost all of her adventures — to zip-lining in Mexico, to being in a giant hot-air balloon in Egypt, to her taking the plunge and deciding to skydive — have happened since she lost her sight. She credited her husband for getting her out camping and taking her on white water canoeing trips.

“I have a tandem mountain bike. So we go tandem mountain biking in the woods. Yeah, we do a lot of crazy stuff,” she said.

Her blindness has been nothing of a deterrent but unfortunately, there are people who consider blindness as an unlivable condition.

“There are a ton of people that say they would rather die than go blind. I mean, they say they’d rather get cancer than go blind. I’m like: really?” she said in astonishment.

JUMPING FOR THE ADA

In June 1990, President George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, despite objections from business interests and religious groups. The act was formed to “establish a clear and comprehensive prohibition of discrimination on the basis of disability,” according to the act, covering employers who provided “reasonable accommodations” to employees who were disabled.

However, despite the passing, people with certain disabilities — including people with low vision or blindness — are still much more likely than their non-disabled counterparts to be unemployed.

“There are a lot of employers that don’t even give anybody with disabilities a chance, which they should, because a lot of people with disabilities really have to think outside of the box and they really have to improvise and come up with creative ways to do things every day, all the time,” she said.

Case in point: Kuester-Sebranek uses multiple features on her mobile phone to allow her to navigate through apps, type to people through email, and accomplish what others could do with the device, without needing to see the screen.

She also pointed out a statistic from the Centers of Disease Control that states that over 25% of people in our country face some kind of disability. Just from the viewpoint of sheer numbers, a law like the ADA makes perfect sense.

MAKING THE LEAP

Kuester-Sebranek decided to go jump through Skydive Wissota in Chippewa Falls, where she was receiving training on tandem diving through skydiving instructor Josh Johnson.

“They have just been awesome and were very accommodating,” she said of Skydive Wissota roughly a week before her jump. “My tandem instructor — we’ve been texting back and forth — said that maybe it might be a good idea if I came out and did some pre-training.”

Soon, it was the big day: Saturday, July 13, and there was no turning back. Joining her was her husband and numerous family members and friends to see her big moment. She hopped in a plane with her instructor, Johnson, her daughter, and her daughter’s tandem partner. Soon, the small plane was 10,000 feet in the sky, and Kuester-Sebranek and Johnson soon came out of the plane, and her parachute was deployed, and she came down to the ground a brief time later full of adrenaline.

“I wasn’t a fan of the freefall, but I liked the slow parachuting down, and then Josh (Johnson) took us on a little roller coaster ride, so that was kind of cool,” she said just after landing.

Johnson was clear that, while having a blind client was a bit unique, there were only a few adjustments that needed to be made for Kuester-Sebranek’s first jump.

“The preparation was just more creative. You have to be more creative,” he said. “Because I can see and she doesn’t shouldn’t be the limitation on somebody like Renee.”

“So they have an audible altimeter in my cap here, and a microphone, so they could hear all my swearing,” said Kuester-Sebranek as she joked about how frightening she found being “pushed out of the plane.”

When asked if she would do it again, she said, with a laugh, “Maybe in ten years.”

One of the people who gathered to see Kuester-Sebranek’s big day was her niece, Molly Zylstra, who already skydived for her 30th birthday. She stated how much pride she felt in her aunt.

“I just think she’s really inspirational! it’s just really cool to see her do all these things and not let her sight inhibit her,” said Zylstra.