If you call this woman Intrepid, you are merely being accurate.
When a retired WWII nurse saw her 100th birthday approaching, she decided to celebrate by engaging in a (terrifying) new learning experience while simultaneously helping people… Because that’s just how some nurses roll.
A couple of years ago, after a neighbor went skydiving, Nurse of the Week Raymonde Sullivan was intrigued. We do not know whether the British-born retiree recalled Parachute Nurse, a film released back when she was a WWII frontline nurse, but something made Sullivan decide to pick up the classic “bucket list” line item and take a literal leap into her next century. However it was, the Florida resident decided that a skydive was just the ticket: “I had never done it, and I’ve done a lot of things in 100 years so I thought I must do it while I can.” 
There was more to it than that, of course. Sullivan tragically lost a daughter to motor neuron disease (the best-known form being Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, which is also known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”), so she worked with the Motor Neurone Disease Association of South Australia to make her birthday challenge into an opportunity to raise funds and awareness for research into a cure.
And what a challenge! Sullivan went through her lessons and on her birthday this May, she made the astonishing jump with her neighbor – in freefall at speeds up to 120 mph, while dropping at 200 feet per second. The game retiree seemed to agree that paratroopers earn every cent of their hazard pay. Describing the experience with British understatement as “scary,” she made it clear that she has no plans for a repeat performance (no doubt to the great relief of her family and friends).
Sullivan might have found the experience more frightening than she had anticipated. The tiny centenarian looked almost petrified as the time neared for her jump (a viewer might feel similarly; the adventure does indeed look “scary”). Having lived through the relentless bombings of the Battle of Britain, though, it was easy for the newbie para nurse to place her fears in context. When her turn came, the petite English nurse kept a stiff upper lip and did her late daughter proud.
After a sad and distressing holiday weekend, we can all do with something uplifting—or peacefully down-drifting. So, without further ado, here is a video showing a terrified-but-impossibly-brave woman who remains undaunted as an instructor tucks her under his arm like a plush toy and leaps out of a plane (note how happy fellow passengers are to see someone else go first):
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