Richard Switlik Sr., the former head of a company whose parachutes helped save thousands of military airmen, died on 4 June 2004. He was 85.

Mr. Switlik was president of Switlik Parachute Co. in Trenton, NJ. The company had been founded under a different name in 1920 by his father, Stanley.

Stanley Switlik in 1934 teamed with George Palmer Putnam, Amelia Earhart's husband, to build a 115-foot tower on Switlik's Ocean County farm to train airmen in parachute jumping. Earhart made the first public jump from the tower in 1935, according to the company's website.

Before the Earhart event, however, Mr. Switlik first leapt from the tower to make sure it was safe, said his son, Richard Switlik Jr.

"He was a remarkable guy who was not afraid to do anything," Switlik Jr. said.

As World War II approached, Switlik Parachute made about 2,500 parachutes each week, Switlik Jr. said. The company estimated that Switlik parachutes saved about 5,000 airmen forced to bail out of their damaged planes.

According to company lore, one of them was a Navy pilot named George H. W. Bush, who bailed out from his damaged plane over the Pacific four decades before becoming President of the United States.

After the war Mr. Switlik oversaw the company's shift in production from parachutes to life vests, life rafts, and other survival gear.

Switlik Sr. was a 1939 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. A Hightstown resident, he served as a captain in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II.