Ruth, who married her childhood friend Claude Hensinger shortly after World War II, was one of the few brides to wear a parachute to her own wedding.

During World War II, Maj. Hensinger was a B-29 pilot. During a failed mission, the groom and the parachute both made it out alive.

In August 1944, he was flying back to an Allied base after bombing over Yowata, Japan, when one of his engines caught on fire.

The whole crew had to get off the ship over China, and that’s when the amazing parachute saved his life. That night, Hensinger used it as a blanket and a pillow while he waited for morning to come.

The crew was able to get back together the next day, and some friendly Chinese took them in. Maj.

Hensinger was able to get back to the US safely, and when the war was over a year later, he moved back to his home state of Pennsylvania with the parachute that saved his life.

When Claude returned to civilian life, he decided to look up his friend Ruth and start dating her.

When it was time for Hensinger to ask Ruth to marry him, Ruth was surprised to see him down on one knee giving her the valuable fabric that had helped him during the war.

“This is the chute that kept me from dying. “I want you to use it to make a wedding dress,” he told her.

Ruth didn’t know what to do with the huge amount of nylon until she saw a billowing dress in a store window that looked like the one in the movie Gone with the Wind.

She hired a local seamstress to sew the bodice and veil, and Ruth made the skirt from the parachute by drawing it out and cutting it out.

She used the parachute cords to make ruching all around the skirt, making it higher in the front and longer in the back to make a train.

With his wish for a parachute wedding dress finally coming true, Claude married Ruth on July 19, 1947, at Neffs Lutheran Church in Neffs, Pennsylvania.

He saw the dress for the first time as she walked down the aisle.

The historic dress was later worn by their daughter and by the bride of their son’s best friend. It is now kept at the Smithsonian Institution as an important piece of American history.