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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Tragedy: David Winoker Dies At 49 in A Skydiving accident

Tragic: David Winoker's heartbroken widow Jillian (right), and their 15-year-old son Jared join mourners at the funeral today. The real-estate scion was killed Friday in a skydiving accident to celebrate a pal's 50th birthday.

She talked him into it.

A Manhattan real-estate scion who died in a freak parachute accident hadn’t wanted to go skydiving, but his wife convinced him to do the jump, the grieving widow admitted today.

“He never said no to me. Maybe this time, he should have said no,” said a heartbroken Jillian Winoker of husband David at his packed Father’s Day funeral at a Bedford synagogue.

Officials said David Winoker — a 49-year-old dad of three from Chappaqua who took over his father’s Manhattan real-estate business — died Friday when the tandem parachute he shared with a diving instructor failed to open during a jump in upstate Plattekill.

The instructor, Alexander Chulsky, 25, of Brooklyn also was killed in the fall.

A family friend said the jump had been delayed to accommodate several people, including David Winoker, who only made up their minds to go at the last minute. The excursion was to celebrate a friend’s 50th birthday.

His wife, describing her husband as “cautious,’’ said he only went after she prodded him.

“Can you imagine doing something that’s not in your nature to do?” the friend said. “You got your 10, 15 seconds, which is generally as long as those falls go anyway, and all of a sudden you realize that something’s not right. To have this happen? Terrible.”

In addition to Jillian, the couple’s three children — Jared, 15, Hillary, 13, and Allison, 7 — spoke at the service. Yesterday was not only Father’s Day, it was David Winoker’s dad Sid’s 83rd birthday.

Allison, with her big brother standing next to her, remembered how her dad tucked her in at night and took her temperature when she was sick.

She held up a piece of paper, designed like a Time magazine “Person of the Year” cover, which was to be her Father’s Day present to him.

“He was supposed to win the ‘Father of the Year’ award” Allison said, wearing a big red tie that belonged to her dad.

Winoker’s elderly parents leaned over his coffin at the beginning of the funeral at Temple Shaaray Tefila, where they were comforted by family and friends.

“David was his — I mean, he loved both his kids very, very much — but David went into the business. He took over for him,’’ said one family friend of the close bond between father and son.

David Winoker’s sister, Gail Winoker, joined male friends and relatives to carry the coffin, which was draped in a blue and white funeral shroud, out of the temple and into the hearse.

NY POST

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