FacebookWhile he was alive, Erik Roner showed little fear—a personal trait his friends still hold dear.
The 39-year-old extreme sportsman of MTV's Nitro Circus, who died Monday after a freak skydiving accident, is being remembered by the comrades who accompanied him along many of his most adventurous global feats.
In interviews by USA Today, pals like Andy Buckworth and Ian McIntosh shared their admiration for Roner and his sheer love for accomplishing the stunts that terrified him.
"He wasn't afraid to follow his dream and go scare himself to live those dreams," said McIntosh, a professional skier and BASE jumper.
"All the crazy things that he did, it was so unique and it was so rare to find someone that had the balls to do that," added Buckworth, a BMX rider who joined Roner on the Nitro Circus tour.
The group recollected particularly daring moments throughout Roner's career that are permanently engrained in their memories—when Roner's wife held his parachute for him because there wouldn't be enough time for him to pull it himself, when he recreated a human version of the popular Apple game Angry Birds and the famous balloon scene from Up, or when he started an impromptu match with a professional Russian wrestler.
"It's about doing what we love and inspiring other people, and that's what Erik was about," McIntosh said. "In Erik's mind, living any other way was a waste."
The compliments continued to flow in memoriam of Roner, who was also a husband to Annika Dahl Roner and father of two.
"There was no better guy than Roner," said Todd Jones, a co-founder of Teton Gravity Research, an action sports media company that featured Roner in numerous films. "He was so perfect, so unique to that because people instantly loved the guy and warmed up to him and trusted him and he had their respect."
"Roner never tried to be a badass. He was just himself and he was funny and he was a character," McIntosh added. "He managed to put himself into his lifestyle that whatever he could dream up, he could then go do."