R.I.P. to a Childhood Superhero

The era I grew up in had plenty of superheros, Superman, Spiderman, Batman, etc., but we had a real life superhero as well, Evel Knievel. Even though as an adult, I’ve come to find he wasn’t the greatest of all people with his brushes with the law and infidelities, for us as children in the 1960s and 1970s, it didn’t matter. He was iconic.

We watched Evel Knievel do the greatest of stunts on his motorcycles on ABC Wide World of Sports. He would jump cars, buses, fountains, canyons, whatever it seemed he could receive the best publicity for, and each time, the stunts seemed to get crazier and crazier. Every boy I knew tried to simulate the jumps they saw Evel do on TV with a combination of pieces of wood, bricks, and whatever else was available in the garage to build a ramp. Every boy back then wanted to be Evel Knievel. Even my best friend’s father had a fascination with Evel, as well as Elvis Presley, as in many ways, they were very similar.

Evel Knievel built his legacy and empire on that notoriety, getting paid handsomely by ABC to film all his outlandish stunts. The funny thing was that many of the times he didn’t make it. He was often not so successful, causing him to break many of the bones in his body, with all of them were rumored to have been broken at one point. He always survived, though, and in some ways that made him even more legendary, as the guy seemed invincible.

It wasn’t Evel Knievel’s daredevil ways that took his life in the end. While he died relatively young for what is expected nowadays at 69, after he had retired, he contracted Hepatitis C, the probable result of one of his many blood transfusions, and ended up with a liver transplant. Years later he was connected to a morphine drip because of his constant severe back pain associated with his many falls and broken bones, but he still survived. What took him down was a lung condition, pulmonary fibrosis. Having trouble breathing, he was rushed to the hospital, but never quite made it, dying in the ambulance. Ironically, his death still ended on a vehicle, yet he wasn’t behind the wheel.

Talking with friends recently about Evel Knievel’s death, one mentioned that fact that while he was the hero of our day, there doesn’t seem to be any equivalent to that these days. There just doesn’t seem to be anyone wowing young kids with that kind of heroics. Additionally, with his red, white, and blue jumpsuits, Evel Knievel was the picture of patriotism to us. We just don’t seem to have any heroes anymore that quite as patriotic or daring.