RAEFORD — A promise is a promise no matter how long the wait is, which is true for one Richmond County Schools teacher and a recent Richmond Senior High School graduate.
Five years ago when he was a seventh grader at Hamlet Middle School, Luke Hawks’ English Language Arts class had a discussion about bucket list items. One of his, he said, was to go skydiving.
Ashleigh Buie, his teacher, wanted to freefall out of an airplane, too. And just like that, a future once-in-a-lifetime adventure was put in the books.
“Our birthdays are around the same time in March,” Hawks, a four-year Richmond soccer player and class of 2020 graduate, said. “It’s kind of funny now, but I just remember throwing out the idea that we should go skydiving together once I turned 18.
“I’m a bit of a thrill seeker, and you won’t find many people willing to jump out of a plane with you,” he added with a laugh. “When Mrs. Buie said she would, I knew we had to do it.”
Buie’s birthday is on March 18, and Hawks’ is on March 23. It was the perfect reason to share the experience.
Fast forward five years, a time that saw Hawks and Buie both move onto the high school as a student and history teacher, respectively. The skydiving idea sort of slipped by the wayside during those years, but it resurfaced during the spring of Hawks’ junior year.
“We both sort of forgot about it,” Buie, who will return to Richmond this school year after a year out-of-state, said. “But it was always in the back of our minds. I saw Luke at a Hamlet soccer game a little over a year ago and he brought it back up.
“A promise is a promise, and I know that we both were people of our word,” she continued. “I made a promise to him and I wanted to keep it. The fact that he wanted to take his seventh grade teacher, that’s pretty cool.”
This past January, Buie started looking at local skydiving venues and had everything lined up for early March — and then the COVID-19 shutdown went into effect.
That put the big day on hiatus for another four months, but the duo made their successful jump on Tuesday at Skydive Paraclete XP in Raeford. But it was well worth the wait.
Jumping from 13,500 feet, Buie and Hawks went tandem jumping to fulfill their promise to one another.
“I’ve bungee jumped, but suiting up in the harness made it so surreal,” Buie explained. “There was a lot of excitement building, especially when we climbed into the little plane. It was an odd feeling going up knowing we were about to jump out.
“When the door opened, there was this huge rush of air and I kept telling myself I had to keep breathing,” she laughed. “Then we rocked out and my mind went totally blank. There was this feeling of me giving up complete and utter control of everything.”
She added that she “couldn’t get over how beautiful the view was from so high up.”
Hawks, who agreed to be the first of the pair to jump, shared a similar experience during the free fall and the ride down after the parachute deployed.
“I really get nervous about things like this, but we’ve been talking about this since seventh grade so that eased my mind a little,” Hawks recalled. “At one point I thought to myself — man, we are really about to jump out of a plane.
“There was a lot of uncertainty and surrealness, especially when we scooted to the edge of the open door,” he added. “The first 10 seconds my mind went blank, I had this rush of adrenaline and then a wave of happiness came over me. I thought about how we kept our promise the whole way down.”
Once safely on the ground, Buie and Hawks embraced in a big hug filled with smiles.
For both Hawks and Buie, the thrill of their skydiving experience is a “memory we’ll share for a lifetime.” But it also runs a lot deeper, the way an educator often helps and looks out for his or her students.
“We made a promise five years ago and it’s cool that Luke wanted to honor that promise he made when he was 13,” Buie said. “It shows that some sort of impact was made on him, something I did affected him. It’s important that we know when we make a promise to kids we have to keep it as educators.
“It’s also important that our kids know we care about them,” she said. “I’m not going to jump out of a plane for anyone. I want all of my students to know that if I taught them, I’m always going to be there for them no matter what.”
In the future, the tandem hopes to make the skydiving adventure an annual event. Hawks is leaving for his freshman year at East Carolina University later this month.
“I think the importance of keeping the promise was that we’re both credible people and we wanted to keep our words to each other,” Hawks said. “Mrs. Buie has been one of the most influential teachers, coaches and people in my life.
“When I came to Hamlet (Middle), her daughter Emily and I became friends. Mrs. Buie and I clicked in class because we have the same kind of humor. And I’ll always be thankful to her for helping me make my decision to play soccer or baseball in high school. I learned to love soccer and I love Mrs. Buie.”
