4-Year-Old Skydiver Is Now All Grown Up, with 26,000 Jumps to His Name. Would He Let His Son Take the Plunge

When Rook Nelson was only 4 years old, his father strapped him into a hang-gliding harness, clipped him in with carabiners, and together they jumped out of a plane high above the clouds.

Back in the mid-1980s, tandem skydiving wasn’t common yet, so his dad, Roger, made adjustments. He padded the leg straps with carpet so his young son wouldn’t complain.

“They were shaking me around to see if I would fall out,” Nelson, now 45 and a father himself, told PEOPLE. “I don’t actually remember the jump, but I definitely remember that part.”

Today, Nelson is more than just a skydiver — he’s the co-director and second-generation owner of Skydive Chicago, the business he inherited from his parents.

“Some people are in a circus, some people farm, some people are in corporate America. We were just people that jumped out of airplanes,” he says.

Along with running the business, Nelson has also built a career as one of the most accomplished skydivers in the world. Earlier this year, he was inducted into the International Skydiving Hall of Fame. Over his lifetime, he has completed more than 26,000 jumps, won 13 world titles, and claimed 18 national championships.

His most recent project was leading 174 skydivers in an attempt to break the world record for head-down formation skydiving. On Friday, Aug. 24, Nelson says he believes they succeeded.

The record, now awaiting certification by the United States Parachute Association, National Aeronautic Association, and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, would beat his previous record of 164 skydivers set in July 2015.

This time, nine aircraft carried the team up to 19,000 feet. Once they exited, the skydivers had 60 seconds to find their positions, lock hands, and hold a snowflake-shaped formation before breaking apart and deploying 174 parachutes in unison.

Nelson’s career hasn’t been without challenges. In October 2023, he was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma on a tonsil. Facing cancer, he says, forced him to think about mortality more seriously than skydiving ever had.

“I don’t ever take for granted that [skydiving] is a high-risk activity,” he told PEOPLE. “When I go to work, I don’t think that I’m not coming home. I’m more worried about the doctor calling me saying I have cancer than dying jumping out of airplanes.”

Even during treatment, Nelson says the record attempt was always on his mind.

“The first jump back was awesome,” he recalls. “I was so happy to have that behind me and get back to normal life. The first jump was great. It was very memorable.”

Now, Nelson hopes his young son, Rocket, will one day share his passion for the sky.

“It was just neat to be up there, kind of passing the torch in a way,” he says.

But when asked if his 7-year-old has gone skydiving yet, Nelson just laughs.

“No,” he says. “I think it’s crazy. I’ve taken him to the indoor wind tunnel.”