BATAVIA, N.Y. — A 106-year-old former U.S. Army Air Corps captain was honored on Friday afternoon in at the Batavia VA Medical Center.
Sydney Cole was reissued a "caterpillar pin" that symbolizes the source of the silk used to make the first parachute canopies. You receive the pin when you're accepted into the Caterpillar Club.
According to the VA, membership to the Caterpillar Club can only happen by accident. It requires a person to bail from a damaged airplane and survive it by using a parachute.
The pin is in recognition of what happened on January 2, 1945, when Cole was a 2nd Lieutenant who "was forced to jump out of his disabled Piper Cub airplane over the skies of Belgium and into German-held territory. He deployed his Irvin backpack-style parachute at an altitude of 1000 feet and survived the emergency jump," according to a VA statement.
Cole applied for club membership in December of 1945.
Other club members include aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh, astronaut John Glenn, and former president, George H.W. Bush.
