1 . In 1970, Alan Ayers was participating in a skydiving team competition in Gainesville, Florida. He would be ________ out of a Cessna 172, a small four seat passenger plane. In preparation, the passenger door and front passenger seat were ________, but the passenger side seatbelt remained.

Ayers’ teammates skydived first, ________ him and the pilot as the only two people remaining in the plane. It was Ayers’ ________. But as he stepped out into the air, his foot got ________ in the passenger side seatbelt.

“I was completely out of the plane on my back, ________ at the belly (腹部) of the Cessna, with only my boot ________ to the pilot ... I tried to pull myself up to reach the buckle (锁扣), but I just couldn’t,” Ayers remembered.

Thousands of feet in the air, hanging from the plane, Ayers was out of ________.

“And what happened next was ________,” Ayers said. “The 23-year-old pilot unbuckled her seatbelt, crouched (蹲) down in the door of the airplane, with both hands off the operating handle, and ________ my ankle.”

Ayers dropped away from the plane, opened his parachute, and landed ________.

More than 50 years later, she often came into his ________. “To this day, I can see her two ________ hands reaching out of the door to unbuckle the belt,” Ayers said. “I owe my ________ to this person and will always think of her as one of the ________ people imaginable.”