Falling in Love
One widow’s story of thrilling love, a devastating loss and moving forward with an enthusiastic passion for life.
Kathy and Steve Drybread // photo courtesy of Rowan Westwood
by Rowan Westwood
Kathy Drybread lost her husband to the sky. Steve Drybread was killed in a plane crash in August 2002. Everything before that had these two love birds on cloud nine, literally.
Kathy’s story just might convince you that, even though life has an expiration date, true love doesn’t. Kathy and “Bread,” as his friends liked to call him, spent 12 years creating adventures together.
When asked to characterize Bread in three words, Kathy dotingly replied with, “talented, adventurous, and really, really sexy.” As she described the twinkly brown eyes that initially caught her attention, it’s clear that her image of him has not faded.
At the time, Kathy was 28 and her career was taking off. In turn, it was beginning to feel as though there wasn’t much left for her in the small farm town of Indianapolis she called home. So, she applied for a transfer to San Diego, California. “My personality was always too much for Indiana,” said Kathy with blissful recollection.
Steve and Kathy Drybread both grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. However, they didn’t meet until 1987, at the wedding of her younger sister. She was dying for him to ask her to dance, and to her excitement, he did. To say the least, she was smitten upon first sight.
Steve Drybread was a part of the band The Boys Next Door, an Indianapolis-based surf-rock band that opened for the Beach Boys back in 1963. Kathy got word from her sister that their band was practicing one night. She told Kathy to come over quickly because Bread was there, and he was all alone. She hopped in her car and made her way to band practice, held at a Tux shop called DC Designers that was owned by a friend of theirs, Donny Corbett.
Kathy and Steve had their first date after band practice that night at a local stop right next door, Micky Quinn’s: A name that Kathy would later give her first dog, who she also deemed as one of the greatest loves of her life.
When asked if she remembers the moment she fell in love, Kathy recalled a specific kiss.
“When he kissed me, this time it was different. There’s nothing like the art of a good kiss. I think about that kiss all the time,” she said. “I wish I didn’t though.”
After two years of splitting their love between Indianapolis and San Diego, Kathy received the news that she was going to be transferred. Shortly after her transfer, Kathy and Bread were married on his birthday, which happened to be one day after hers.
Kathy and Bread skiing // photo courtesy of Rowan Westwood
Kathy and Bread shared many common passions. They were avid skiers and loved white water rafting, heli-skiing and flying together. “We just had quite an adventuresome life together, it was fantastic,” she said.
There was always a bag packed in her car just in case they decided to embark on a weekend adventure, which was often.
“We were the ‘rent the helicopter, get dropped from the top of the mountain and ski down’ kinda couple,” she said.
There was just one adventure the two had yet to embark on: skydiving. Re-living the anxiety she felt while driving to the drop zone for the first time Kathy said, “I had waterproof mascara on, it had just become available… I was crying in the car all the way to the drop zone, thankfully nobody could tell.”
She spent all day training for her skydive. Once Kathy took that leap of faith, the rest was history.
After that, a tradition had been born. The two went skydiving every year for their anniversary. There were no safety laws when they began jumping in 1991, so they would sometimes fall through the sky naked. They would wear their bathing suits in the plane, then right before they were about to jump, when the pilot wasn’t looking, they’d take off their suits, pack them up, and jump.
“We would laugh at each other because skin in free-fall looks terrible!” She added. They would also kiss while free-falling together, like a scene right from a mission impossible movie, but more romantic.
Kathy and Bread after skydiving // photo courtesy of Rowan Westwood
Kathy went on to be a part of the U.S. Women’s Skydiving Team, and jumping out of airplanes continued to be one of her greatest passions. Kathy maintained the practice of skydiving until four years ago.
On a particular skydiving trip one summer, Kathy and Bread went camping in Joshua Tree State Park. They had planned to wake up early to go skydiving the next day, not expecting a 4 a.m. earthquake to be their alarm clock.
Kathy described how incredible it was seeing the desert floor move, how the ground split and sand flooded the crevices of the earth. After enjoying cold coffee due to the power outage, they left for “breakfast run” (their first run of the day) at the drop zone.
Then came the aftershock, only this time they weren’t on the ground. As Kathy and Bread were in free-fall, they pulled their parachutes and noticed the movement of Bread’s parachute, as it mirrored the vibrating earth. When he gestured towards the ground, Kathy saw telephone poles moving and heard car horns going off everywhere. They were in another earthquake, witnessing it like birds.
When they reached the ground they just sat there and laughed, amused by their morning. “What are the chances we would experience two earthquakes in two different places, one on the ground and one in the air?”
Another favorite adventure Kathy had with Bread was when they were flying to a plane race in New Mexico. Bread had recently built his own plane, and racing planes was a hobby of his.
As they were soaring over the flat, red mountains of Nevada, Kathy suddenly felt her stomach drop. Through the microphone she told Bread, “I don’t want to be losing altitude right now.” He looked at her and said, “I don’t either.”
She described the sweat beads coming down his calm face as they were losing altitude.
With the help of their trusty GPS, Kathy found an abandoned prison runway on which they could land. As they were approaching a rocky landing, Kathy put her microphone up. She didn’t want Bread to hear her heavy breathing and prayers.
Thankfully, it wasn’t their last day flying and they landed safely.
Kathy said she couldn’t believe how her life was going back in the day. “My life has always consisted of great fun or great adversity, nothing in between.”
When asked about true love, Kathy spoke of the intense emotion that accompanies feeling crazy about someone: infatuation.
“Infatuation is such a powerful feeling. That chemistry, that pull, that crazy about you, can’t sleep, can’t eat kind of thing…that initial infatuation as the relationship matures is what grows into true passion.”
When we spoke of the day Bread died, Kathy said she was driving home and saw cars lined up on the street. She thought she might have been walking into a surprise anniversary party. Instead, she walked into her home to discover that she would never go on another adventure with Bread again. He was 54.
Loving the way she did, and continues to, Kathy emphasized three points she thought were vital to the survival of a true and lasting love:
Don’t sell yourself short on the person that is perfect for you on paper.
If you think you’re in love with someone, then you are in love with them. So, you’re in love! Go for it! Life is short.
There will be red flags, everyone has red flags. You just have to decide if the green ones fly bigger and brighter.
Kathy is confident she will meet Bread again someday. She still talks to him sometimes, as people often talk to God. An atonement to the fact that just because we can’t see something or someone, doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
Kathy and Bread with their dog // photo courtesy of Rowan Westwood
Kathy described a chilling experience she had with him that she thinks back on often. One of these experiences occurred just two nights before Bread’s accident. When Kathy came home from work one night, Bread asked her to hold him, to just embrace him. This moment haunts her to this day because of how out of character it was for Bread. Kathy holds this moment close. She said with moments like these, if you aren’t passionate about the person, it’d just be like any other ordinary moment.
After emerging from her initial state of denial that her husband was gone, the real pain set in. Kathy would try distracting herself from feeling raw, sober emotion. When she was forced to face her pain head on, it was tiring. “Grief is exhausting,” she told me.
“If anything could come out of this to help somebody else, I hope they hear that if you choose to numb yourself with whatever it may be, you’re only doing yourself a great disservice.”
The sooner you deal with pain, the sooner you can start recovering. To help cope, Kathy would sometimes attend support groups. She said, “People in the support groups would always ask ‘why me?’ But I never asked ‘why me?’ Because we had a very on-the-edge lifestyle.”
With the help of her faith and perseverance, Kathy found love once more within her habits. She makes the best lemon bars you’ll ever taste, she’s always up for an adventure and she continues to lead in life with love. Though she’s endured pain, it’s only made her stronger.
Kathy was the last person to talk to Bread. When asked what she would have said to him if she could have said goodbye, she kept her answer sweet and simple.
In the words of Stevie Wonder, she would’ve just called to say, “I love you.”