Thomas Conner recently climbed aboard a DHC-6 Twin Otter utility airplane and soared skyward. At 13,008 feet, Conner stood, walked to the door, and dove headfirst out of the plane and into the frigid vastness.
For the first few seconds, he kept his body in a tucked position and his head up. After clearing the tail of the plane, he extended his arms and legs, fully inflating his nylon wingsuit and rocketing through the air. Reaching speeds of up to 120 mph, he deployed his parachute at around 5,000 feet and safely floated back to earth.
As he landed, 67-year-old Thomas earned a spot in the Guinness World Records as the oldest male in the world to complete a wingsuit flight, considered one of the most demanding disciplines in skydiving.
It is just the latest chapter in what has been a very colorful and accomplished life. Conner, a retired U.S. Air Force veteran and lifelong adventurer, graduated Summa Cum Laude from A&M-San Antonio in 2021 with a B.S. in psychology.
Today, he lives in Hondo—about 40 miles west of San Antonio—on 10 acres in a cabin he built himself that he shares with his dog and cat.
Conner grew up in Illinois and was an all-conference athlete, playing football, basketball and baseball.
“I was an adrenaline junkie,” said Conner, who turned 68 in December. “I loved excitement.”
After high school, he joined the U.S. Air Force, which took him all over the country. While stationed in Northern California, he saw a poster in a local recreation center advertising “sky diving lessons for thrill seekers.”
“It sounded right up my alley,” he said. “I was one of their first students.”
This began a decades-long love affair with skydiving, and over the years he completed some 400 jumps.
Conner retired from the Air Force in 1994 and started working in the finance industry, a career path that eventually led him to San Antonio in the early 2000s. With family and work responsibilities, he had to give up skydiving—at least temporarily.
Years later, Conner was ready to retire and escape the hustle and bustle of the city. He bought 10 acres in Hondo and with the help of YouTube videos, built a cabin in the woods.
“I built everything from the bottom up,” he said.
For the first three years, the cabin didn’t have electricity or plumbing, and Conner relied on a solar power system and a compost toilet. During the summers, he traveled around the country, escaping the Texas heat for cooler destinations. He eventually upgraded his cabin and settled into his new life.
“After you retire, a lot of people get bored, but I just set different goals for myself and learn how to achieve them.”
One of those goals was to go back to college. With the help of A&M-San Antonio’s Military Affairs office, Conner worked with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which paid for him to attend classes full-time and gave him a monthly stipend. He started at A&M-San Antonio in 2019 and two years later graduated with a bachelor’s in psychology.
Conner explained that he first became interested in psychology during his military career, when he took supervisor courses that covered psychological theories about human motivation and needs. This sparked an interest in the topic, and he later studied behavioral modification. Once he retired, he decided to finally earn a degree in the field that had helped him both professionally and personally throughout his life. Plus, it was just fun going back to school, he said.
“I drove to campus every day. I liked the atmosphere and the culture of the daytime classes,” he said. There weren’t as many old farts like me during the day, and it was fun getting to know the younger generations. They were really good to me.”
One day, when he was driving back home to Hondo from A&M-San Antonio, he saw signs for a skydiving school.
“I said, ‘You know what, there's my next goal. I want to get back into skydiving.”
And that’s just what he did, going to Skydive Spaceland San Marcos, which offers training programs from first-time tandem skydives through advanced disciplines like wingsuiting and canopy piloting.
Over the next several years, he went skydiving more than 100 times. Eventually, with the support of his instructors and fellow skydivers—most of whom were less than half his age—he built up the confidence to try a wingsuit flight.
Conner started his wingsuit training in early 2025, including a First Flight Course, which included ground training on specialized gear and learning how to safely exit the plane and maintain stability in the air.
“You're basically a glider, and you're flying horizontally just about as fast as you're falling vertically,” he said. “I learned fairly quickly, and by the end of the training, I felt very safe.”
Still, he admits the actual wingsuit flight was a nerve-wracking experience.
“It’s the most nervous I've been going up in an airplane,” he said. “It's an entirely different sport than skydiving, and much more dangerous. But as soon as I exited the plane and opened my wings, everything went perfect. It was the coolest experience I'd ever had in my life.”
And while hurtling through the sky in a wingsuit may be his most headline-grabbing achievement, Conner said walking across the stage at A&M–San Antonio remains one of his proudest moments.
“I’m not an adrenaline junkie anymore,” he said. “I’m a goal setter and achiever. You never know what the future might bring you, but you can keep pushing boundaries and chasing new dreams.”
For Conner, earning his bachelor’s degree was proof that it’s never too late to chase a new horizon, whether in the classroom or 13,000 feet above the ground.