A tribute to John Partington Smith, 11 May 1940 – 8 October 2024
By Graham Spicer, The British Skydiving Archive
All Images courtesy of Maggie PS
John Partington Smith, or JPS as he was universally known in the skydiving world, was born in Freezywater, a parish in North Enfield, just after the start of World War II. John suffered infant trauma following a rather close call during an air raid, which resulted in his evacuation to Lytham St Annes. Upon his return home, John attended St Joseph’s Junior School in Waltham Cross, where, at the age of eleven, he won a scholarship to St Ignatius Jesuit Grammar School in Stamford Hill, where his creative talents started to emerge.
The catalyst for John’s involvement in skydiving was his enrolment at Hornsey College of Arts in North London in the late 1950s. Here he met Margaret De la Salle (who later married the BPA’s fourth Chairman, Lawrie St John), and would travel to the college her on the same trolleybus. Margaret was also friends with Fred Gayler, who had previously also attended Hornsey College of Arts, whom she met through work. This triumvirate of Hornsey alumni went on to become a pre-eminent creative force in the early BPA. Fred started skydiving in the late 1950s and designed the logo for the British Parachute Club, before creating the first BPA badge in 1961 after the Association was formed. Margaret was an accomplished sculptor and painter and created a range of BPA merchandise sold through Sport Parachutist magazine from the mid-1960s. It was JPS, however, who would go on to produce the most enduring part of BPA history. In 1973 he created the iconic BPA free faller logo, updating Fred’s original design, and this would remain in use for over 46 years, albeit with small modifications, until the BPA rebranded as British Skydiving in November 2019. The logo was used on everything BPA, during this time, even the clock face at HQ until this was retired to the Archive in 2020.
Margaret recalls that it was she and Fred who first took JPS to a DZ where he soon felt the urge to get his knees in the breeze. Jumping initially at Fairoaks with the British Parachute Club, he then jumped at Blackbushe after the BPC relocated there in the 1960s.
There were two significant sporting events, in the long hot summer of 1966, that made the front pages of the newspapers. The first being that the football World Cup was being held here in Blighty and the second was that JPS, jumping at Blackbushe, had an off landing that brought down an 11,000 volt overhead power cable, leaving the village of Yately, Hampshire, without electricity. Everyone was made of sterner stuff, back then, and the response was surprisingly low-key. The person would, in today’s parlance, be termed ‘the first responder’ exchanged a few words with JPS who was fortunately uninjured but rather embarrassed. The offending cable was still sparking, setting fire to the undergrowth and was extinguished by the Fire Brigade before the Electricity Board arrived to fix the problem. JPS, meanwhile, gathered up his parachutes and made his way back on foot to the airfield some distance away, before repacking his parachute ready for the next jump. Nowadays, an event of this type would be declared a major incident and would result in a massive turnout by the emergency services and involve road closures as well as intense speculation on social media that a flying saucer was somehow involved. Life was a lot less complicated, back in the day…
History doesn’t record whether the Electricity Board sent JPS the repair bill, but an apoplectic resident, who had apparently recently undergone a sense of humour bypass, wrote to the Ministry of Aviation expressing his extreme displeasure with the whole affair. There was a happy ending however, a few weeks later, when England went on to win the World Cup and the rest, as they say, is history. Interestingly, recent statistical analysis has confirmed that a skydiver is more likely to have a close encounter with a power line than England are to win the World Cup.
Despite this early setback, with which a number of us can identify, JPS was to become an accomplished skydiver. He jumped on several continents and attended the RW World Meet at Fort Bragg in the USA, where he participated in the now legendary Chinook jump and was a British10-way National Champion in 1975.
JPS was very creative and made a name for himself at a number of leading advertising agencies and also created the Superfly cartoons that featured in Sport Parachutist between 1974 and 1982. Following on, from Lawrie St John’s now infamous Double Diamond beer commercial, JPS featured in a skydiving related campaign for Booth’s Gin. He will also always be remembered for his role in the design and production of the three classic Skies Call books written by his good friend photographer, Andy Keech, from whose poem the name was taken.
‘Man small, Why fall? Skies call. That’s all.’
JPS was, himself, a skilled aerial photographer, and he and Dave Waterman were parachute cameramen on the star-studded, 1977 war film, based on Cornelius Ryan’s book, A Bridge Too Far. It is not widely known that the film is always shown on a giant screen, in the huge hangar at Eindhoven Air Force Base, where several hundred paratroopers kit up for the mass drop onto Ginkel Heath, every September, to commemorate the Battle of Arnhem. Tradition demands that the participants always hum along to the theme, and consume unfeasibly large quantities of tea and cake, whilst on a weather hold until the obligatory fog clears. The aerial footage, shot by John and Dave for the film, remains extremely evocative even after all these years.
Outside of skydiving, JPS had a keen interest in Romany culture, particularly vintage horse-drawn caravans. It was local artist, Pip Moysey, who first introduced JPS to the Romany lifestyle in a small village in Kent where, with his wife Shirley, he established his lifelong home, collecting and restoring many Romany wagons. Intense passion was ever his trademark, and he learned how to paint traditional signwriting, turn spoked wheels, make carved mouldings and grind ornate mirrors for the caravans and would later go on to forge lifelong friendships within various Romany communities around the country.
For those of you who knew John and wondered about his missing fingertip, but didn’t like to ask, this was as a result, to his everlasting embarrassment, of trying to make an adjustment to his bicycle whilst riding at some speed when he was younger.
Sadly, John’s wife Shirley passed away in 2022 after an extended illness. JPS carried on, despite feeling her loss deeply, before himself succumbing following a period of ill-health. JPS is survived by his sister Maggie, son Dominic, granddaughters Jessica and Keira and his stepdaughter. John was a gentleman, intelligent, artistic and personable. He is remembered with great warmth by all who knew him. We too shall always remember, with gratitude, John’s outstanding contribution to our sport and his enduring role in the history of the British Parachute Association. The last word comes from John’s great friend, and Skies Call collaborator, Andy Keech:
‘JPS was a giant presence in the skydiving world and will be remembered across continents for many years to come’
Something, I think, with which we would all agree.
