“I’d much rather die living than risk dying without having lived at all.”

It was a rendition of a phrase I’d heard before, but this time, it meant more.

The voice that crackled through my cell phone speaker was friendly. It was honest. It came with a slight twang, often accompanied by a distinctive pause during the collection of thoughts. Even though I was asking questions that had surely been asked a thousand times over, it was obvious that there was attention behind each corresponding response. I appreciated that.

The voice belonged to Tommy Fergerson, a man who has certainly “lived” more in his 55 years than most could imagine living throughout an entire lifetime. Tommy was once in the Air Force, in a past life he was a plumber, he’s a published author, and the CEO of a non-profit – but that’s not what Tommy is known for, at least not with most.

On April 30, 2011, Tommy jumped out of an airplane for the 343th time, and after that, his life would never be the same.

“What the freak did I hit?”

From the moment Tommy asked the question, that line would start to define his life – but not in the direction you might expect.

“What the freak did I hit?”

The concise answer to that question was the corner of a parked trailer…at about 45 miles per hour. Tommy asks the question several times in the same video that captures his death-dodging skydiving crash. (Find the video at the bottom of this piece, viewer discretion advised).

Surprisingly coherent throughout the recording of the accident, Tommy aptly responds to several questions, calmly denies ambulance transportation, and even inspects the camera that captured it all. Despite the fact that his left arm hangs limp, it would be hard to guess that he had broken eight bones, ripping the nerves in his left arm from his spinal cord in the process – the factor that would eventually result in amputation.

“You have to enjoy life as much as possible because it can change in an instant.”

Another line came through the speaker that was similar to what I’d heard, but again, in this case, it carried more weight.

In Tommy’s case, life changed as swiftly as the direction of the wind changed – in the form of a downdraft that altered his trajectory. At that point, there wasn’t much he could do but brace himself for impact.

Since then Tommy jokes that he’s been “living with one arm in the grave.”

Tommy goes on to explain how his crash wasn’t the life-shattering experience that many might expect. He talks about the importance of not dwelling on the things that can’t be changed. He references the oddity in there being a “norm” one is supposed to follow in the aftermath of a crisis. At one point, he even quickly utters that the crash was “one of the best things” that’s happened to him, also admitting how strange that must sound.

For Tommy, his crash put him on a trajectory of changing lives. Even just over the phone, I could tell that his outlook was something worth listening to.

“Don’t let other people build your barriers. A lot of the time, personal obstacles are really just put there by other people.”

Tommy went on to explain that in the period following his accident, people’s expectations about what he should be able to do impacted their assumptions of what he could actually do. Little did they know, their expectations were far from reality.

Soon, Tommy was jumping out of airplanes again, becoming the first ever one-armed skydiver in the process. While one-armed skydivers had jumped with a prosthetic before, no one had jumped with one point of contact with the equipment. Tommy did.

Lack of an example meant that there was a learning curve. Tommy had to pioneer a means of controlling a parachute with one hand, something that typically requires pulling handles on each side of the body. After a few hard falls, he developed his own system by using a carabiner to connect his controls, allowing him to move his chute with one pull.

At the time of our conversation, Tommy had jumped a total of 857 times, a number sure to soon rise. Keep in mind that 514 of those jumps were with one arm.

“It’s not the incident, the accident, or the tragedy that defines you. It’s what you do thereafter,” Tommy explains the crux of his positive outlook, the same one that didn’t allow him to slow down following his crash.

Since his accident, Tommy continues to pursue his passion of skydiving, along with a variety of other extreme sports, including rafting, skiing, and summiting peaks. But that’s not where Tommy’s pursuit of passion stops.

He’s since started a non-profit called Clasp Life, an organization with the goal of “helping people keep their passion and their independence.”

The most difficult thing for Tommy to face following his accident were the secondary stressors. It wasn’t regret over losing his arm, it was about problems with insurance and growing medical bills. It was the stress of having to relearn basic tasks – tying shoes, for instance. It was about the uncertainty of how everything would pound out after the dust had truly settled.

These secondary stressors were why Tommy started Clasp Life – so that he could help relieve others of these in their own time of strife. Whether it’s raising money for someone’s adaptive sporting equipment or simply providing emotional support based on his own experiences, Tommy’s goal is for people going through the roughest times to know that they’re not alone.

To Tommy, what seems to add the “life” to life is the ability to act like yourself, whether it’s through doing what you love or simply through being able to do what you want – and he wants to make sure people that come to Clasp Life are able to do just that.

Many people faced with Tommy’s timeline would consider their life to be tragic, but Tommy doesn’t dwell on the what-ifs. Instead, he looks ahead to his next jump, he looks ahead to the next person he can help, he looks ahead to the next time he can share his story with someone that needs to hear that life doesn’t have to end following a crisis.

In many ways, the line “what the freak did I hit?” applies to more than just the parked trailer. It applies to Tommy’s life, and how one jarring moment meant a stark departure from the path he was on.

Tommy will never get his arm back. He’ll likely always suffer from phantom pain – an excruciating condition that results from the loss of a limb. He’ll continue to have skeptics questioning his extreme lifestyle. But Tommy doesn’t waste energy thinking about these things. Instead, his mind is turned toward living a life that helps others, whether it be through inspiration or support.

Out of everything Tommy said throughout our chat, one piece of advice seemed to stick with me the most.

“If you want to feel good about yourself, help someone else.”

Again, something familiar, but again, something that simply made sense.

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Below you’ll find the video of Tommy’s crash. Be warned, the video is graphic and includes profanity: