Jim Edds

Description

I was born in Wiesbaden, Germany and every couple of years it was moving time. That's right, welcome to life growing up in the Air Force. I got to know a lot of people not very well. The plus side was I lived in Guam, a beautiful tropical Island where I learned to SCUBA dive and swim competitively - two sports that would help me later filming Hurricanes and alligators in the Everglades. Dad retired at Eglin AFB in the Florida Panhandle but after 5 months we moved our net worth yet again to Pensacola, Florida only this time the Air Force didn't do it for us - we did the lifting. I finished High School here in Pensacola then went on to Pensacola Junior College and finally got my BS in Chemistry at the University of West Florida. At the time UWF was an upper level university and that meant they served beer on campus at the "Rat" - the local chow hall near the Library. Oh, the good ole days! Life was grand in the Chemistry department because we had a key to the Bld. 58, a key to the lab, and a key to our very own desk in the lab. That meant we could go in and out any time day or night. It also meant they expected a lot of work out of us too! I didn't mind, I had the time of my life there. Back in 1979 I had my first good encounter with a hurricane as "Fredric" came by on the way to wrecking Mobile, Alabama. What a sight to go out at night and see the big ole pine tree in the front yard horizontal in 90 mph wind. Fredric had lots of lightning too which is a good sign the cane is really juiced up. If you want to see people get excited just tell them a category 3 hurricane is coming! Ever since Fredric I was plotting every storm that formed. In later years, I'd call the National Hurricane Center NHC) and ask for the latest coordinates on the storm. It was during one of those calls that I talked with Todd Kimberlain, a high school volunteer at the NHC and later the dean of Hurricane chasing Jim Leonard. Jim would later play a pivital role in my career path in 1998. My senior year was delayed a full year because of a unfortunate close encounter I had while spearfishing at the Alabama Point Bridge with a 28 foot Bertram boat. I was holding my breath in about 9 feet of water looking for flounder in the sand when I heard the familiar sound of a boat prop. It didn't bother me as I had heard this sound many times before. Then the pitch changed and I could tell it was getting closer. I finally had to come up cause I was out of breath. Upon surfacing I looked up at the bow headed right for me only 15 feet or so away. I made a lightning fast dive to get under the boat but this big Bertram was not on a plane and digging low in the water. The twin screw Bertram with 350 hp each sucked first my flippers and then me up through both props. I was a real mess after that. The Life Flight helicopter out of Baptist Hospital picked me up about 15 minutes later. I remember the flight nurse gave me a copy of the report some time later and it said my blood pressure had dropped to 60/0. This was the same helicopter that I'd ride out as an EMT a few years earlier and pick up injured people.

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