4-Year-Old Skydiver Is All Grown Up, a Dad Now and in the Hall of Fame (Exclusive)

When Rook Nelson was just 4 years old, his dad rigged him into a hang-gliding harness, clipped him in with carabiners and sent them both tumbling out of a plane — high, high, high up in the clouds.

This was the mid 1980s and tandem skydiving hadn’t been popularized yet, so his father, Roger, adjusted accordingly by stuffing carpet padding into the leg pads to stop him from fussing.

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

These days, in addition to being a skydiver, Nelson is the co-director and second-generation owner of Skydive Chicago, a 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.

In addition to carrying on the family business, Nelson grew up to become one of the sport’s most decorated athletes.

Earlier this year, he was inducted into the International Skydiving Hall of Fame. He’s completed more than 26,000 jumps, won 13 world titles and claimed 18 national championships.

His latest endeavor was leading and organizing 174 skydivers in an attempt to break a world record for head-down formation skydiving. And on Friday, Aug. 24, he thinks they did it.

The record, which is currently being certified by the United States Parachute Association, National Aeronautic Association and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale would top his previous record of 164 skydivers set in July 2015.

This time, Nelson’s team exited nine aircraft at 19,000 feet and had 60 seconds to find their slots, lock hands and hold a snowflake formation before breaking apart to deploy 174 parachutes in unison.

Nelson’s professional career hasn’t been without personal setback.

In October 2023, after he discovered he had squamous cell carcinoma on a tonsil, he was confronted with his own mortality in ways that he felt he had never experienced before.

“I don’t ever take for granted that [skydiving] is a high-risk activity,” he tells 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.”

Throughout treatment, Nelson says, world record attempt was never far from his mind. 

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

Nelson hopes his own son, Rocket, will share his love of the sky.

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

But when asked if he’s taken his 7-year-old skydiving just yet, Nelson laughs and shakes his head.

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