University of Florida alum, former Gator band member dies in Missouri plane crash

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) - One of the 12 people killed in a plane crash in Missouri on Sunday graduated from the University of Florida and participated in the Fightin’ Gators Marching Band.

Blake Thacker, 25, a Tallahassee, Florida, native, went skydiving for the first time on his 18th birthday with his mother, Sherry. He was set to get his skydiving coach certification over the weekend, she told the Associated Press.

“Skydiving had given him the confidence to do other things in his life, to be successful and reach for things maybe he thought he wasn’t good enough to do,” she said.

The Bates County coroner’s office identified Thacker on Tuesday afternoon as one of the passengers killed when a skydiving plane crashed at the Butler Memorial Airport.

His parents say Thacker was a high-achieving student with an interest in music, computer science, and aeronautics.

He played on the Florida drumline for the first two years at the university before the COVID-19 pandemic reduced activities.

While at UF, his love of skydiving grew with a group of friends doing regular jumps in Palatka.

“That became his second home. And he was going every week, and he just had gotten the bug,” Richard Thacker told our sister station WCTV. “I like to say he found his people there. You know, he found a group, the band and marching band drumline that was his people, too.”

He studied computer science, earning a bachelor’s degree before continuing at UF for a master’s degree.

“While he was there, he had a couple of different summer internships, but the one that stands out was with NASA. He worked on that Artemis II rocket project and was very proud of that. And he loved that culture,” his father continued.

His experience with NASA, skydiving, and academic achievements at UF helped him get a job with Garmin, a company that makes GPS-enabled products for outdoor recreation and aviation use, near Kansas City. He continued his passion for skydiving there.

“Blake was doing something that he was very happy with. It gave him great pleasure. He was all in with this. He wouldn’t want anything to disparage the sport,” his father said. “The people in this sport and industry are fantastic people, and they’re a real community.”

He was training with a world-renowned instructor, Jen Sharp, 55, who also died in the crash on Sunday.

The coroner’s office identified the other crash victims as: Kurt John Roy, Michael R. Shanahan, David Hershberger, Sai Karthik Varma Datla, Matthew Swope, Dustin McKinney, Marcus Miller, Nicholas Nash, William Fischer, and Dane Cordes.

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