Voice-over actor dies in skydiving collision
Other man in midair accident injured but able to deploy backup parachute
He was an innovator. A radio whiz. An adventurer. A beloved voice of Houston.
Randy Schell, a father of three, died Saturday in a shocking midair skydiving. He was 64.
The voice-over actor and radio producer collided with another seasoned skydiver — 74-year-old Denis Wolf — after they deployed their parachutes during a group jump, according to Rosharon-based Skydive Spaceland.
Wolf broke a rib in the crash and fractured a leg in the landing he made with a backup parachute. He is expected to be released from the hospital Monday.
Witnesses believe Schell may have gone unconscious after the collision, rendering him unable to deploy his backup parachute.
Both men had completed at least one successful dive earlier in the day, the company said. Friends said Schell recently notched his 1,700 jump, a tally that started four decades ago.
“Our sky family is a close-knit one, and this hits us all very hard,” Skydive Spaceland’s CEO Steve Boyd said. “We will be working on plans to honor his memory with a suitable memorial.”
Chuck Akers was one of the seven divers in the air with Schell on Saturday. The duo first met at a drop zone some 30 years ago and jumped together often.
“Randy was just a real steady, stable, relaxed, casual guy,” he said. “Randy was huge in the voice industry, but people who knew him as a skydiver. He never talked about that. He was just enjoying the moment. It sounds cliche, but I guarantee you when he died, he died absolutely loving every moment of what he was doing.”
The focus of the jump Saturday was to form an eight-person formation and then break apart about 3,000 feet off the ground, Akers said, with each diver gaining as much separation as possible before deploying their chute. Schell and Wolf simply wound up too close together, Akers said, a problem worsened by
Schell’s chute deploying at an angle.
“He didn’t do anything wrong, and the guy he had the collision with didn’t do anything wrong. It was just a freak accident,” said Akers, who also represents the Gulf Coast region on the board of directors of the U.S. Parachute Association. “We understand the risks that we take. We do everything we can to mitigate those risks, and then everything else from there forward is fate.”
Akers and Schell worked together at Cox Media Group, where Akers is a host on Country Legends 97.1 FM and Schell, the production manager, had a two-decade tenure.
Celebrated as innovator
His death sent shock waves through the radio community. Grieving friends described him as “love incarnate” and “one of the greatest voices in the radio business.”
“I don’t even know how we’ll go on without him,” said Maureen Cooper, a Cox co-worker, who described Schell as passionate about skydiving, karate and physical fitness — and supremely knowledgeable about the radio world.
Friends celebrated him as an innovator and jackof-all-trades.
“He created software, he wrote computer programs, he started businesses, he was a skydiver,” said former co-worker Jeromy Adams. “Every time you thought you had him figured out, you found this other angle, and every angle was better than the one before.”
A Louisiana native, Schell found a love for sound at 10 when he nabbed his father’s tape recorder and started learning about audio, according to his website. Four years later, he persuaded a local radio station to let him help out.
Schell’s ‘golden voice’
Eventually, he moved to the Houston area and expanded his voice-over work, with the help of Pastorini-Bosby Talent Agency.
“He had a golden voice and he knew how to use it,” the company said. “He had a gentle, thoughtful spirit that he brought into every project he worked on.”
His work history included gigs for radio and TV stations from Salt Lake City to Tampa, and even an appearance on “Modern Family.” He did commercials for everything from “Fear the Walking Dead” to Geico.
Los Angeles-based voice-over coach Nancy Wolfson remembered him as a committed actor, always willing to learn. The best traits of his personality were reflected in his sonorous speech, she said.
“I would describe his voice and brand as I would describe the man,” she said. “Easy and strong as your favorite pair of jeans, compelling, ageless, empathetic, energetic, and ultimately Western and brimming with wonderment.”
Fewer skydiving deaths
Skydive Magazine has called Skydive Spaceland Greater Houston’s largest skydiving center. The business started in Rosharon in 1999 and has since spread to Florida and Georgia.
During a 2012 lawsuit, Skydive Spaceland CEO Steve Boyd acknowledged seven deaths out of about 1 million jumps, which he deemed a good record given its dangerous nature. The company logged its eighth fatality in 2013 when an experienced jumper suffered an equipment malfunction and jettisoned his chute.
But despite such tragedies, the risk of injury or death from skydiving has become increasingly rare. In 2015, there were 21 fatal skydiving incidents in the U.S. out of about 4.2 million jumps.
That’s part of a downward trend since the 1970s, when there were about 43 fatalities a year. This decline in fatalities happened as the number of skydiving jumps has almost doubled since 2000.