Jesse Scheckner
Rep. Fabián Basabe is taking his patriotism sky-high this Memorial Day weekend.
The Miami Beach Republican plans to jump with the elite U.S. Army Parachute Team, known widely as the Golden Knights, during the 2025 Hyundai Air and Sea Show.
He’s doing it, he said, to honor military service members past and present.
“This jump is personal,” Basabe said in a statement. “It’s a way of saying: we see you, we thank you, and we will never forget.”
Basabe said he’ll take the ceremonial skydive Saturday, with an early afternoon landing on the sand along Ocean Drive. It’s his first time skydiving.
He encouraged residents and visitors to attend and join in honoring “the legacy of service that defines both our city and our country.”
Miami Beach has a military history more than eight decades deep. Between 1942 and 1945, the city transformed from a tourism destination into a vital military training ground during World War II. The U.S. Army Air Forces Technical Training Command took over and converted more than 300 hotels and apartment buildings into barracks and training facilities for some 500,000 cadets, many of whom returned to call the city home after the war.
This year, Basabe successfully carried legislation to better safeguard some of those historic structures and helped to amend an update to the state’s Live Local Act to do similarly in that bill.
“Miami Beach is more than a place. It’s a promise,” he said. “This city has always stood with our armed forces. We welcome them with pride, with respect, and with open arms. That promise still stands.”
The Golden Knights landing will take place in front of the event stage on Ocean Drive on the first day of the two-day Air and Sea Show, which annually draws thousands to watch military flyovers, watercraft demonstrations, and parachute displays.
Basabe, a well-to-do socialite who represents coastal House District 106 in Miami-Dade County, has recently been embracing events that put him in varying degrees of physical peril to connect with constituents and raise awareness around civic engagement.
Last week, he proposed an unconventional idea to Miami Beach: a post-Session town hall where, after speaking with residents, he would climb into a dunk tank to raise money for the local PTA.
