posted 11-30-2007 06:59 PM                    

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Iconic daredevil Evel Knievel dies at 69
By MITCH STACY, Associated Press Writer

Evel Knievel, the red-white-and-blue-spangled motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over crazy obstacles including Greyhound buses, live sharks and Idaho's Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.

Knievel's death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs.

Knievel had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering spills.

Longtime friend and promoter Billy Rundel said Knievel had trouble breathing at his Clearwater condominium and died before an ambulance could get him to a hospital.

"It's been coming for years, but you just don't expect it. Superman just doesn't die, right?" Rundel said.

Immortalized in the Washington's Smithsonian Institution as "America's Legendary Daredevil," Knievel was best known for a failed 1974 attempt to jump Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered cycle and a spectacular crash at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. He suffered nearly 40 broken bones before he retired in 1980.

"I think he lived 20 years longer than most people would have" after so many injuries, said his son Kelly Knievel, 47. "I think he willed himself into an extra five or six years."

Though Knievel dropped off the pop culture radar in the '80s, the image of the high-flying motorcyclist clad in patriotic, star-studded colors was never erased from public consciousness. He always had fans and enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in recent years.

His death came just two days after it was announced that he and rapper Kanye West had settled a federal lawsuit over the use of Knievel's trademarked image in a popular West music video.

Knievel made a good living selling his autographs and endorsing products. Thousands came to Butte, Mont., every year as his legend was celebrated during the "Evel Knievel Days" festival, which Rundel organizes.

"They started out watching me bust my ass, and I became part of their lives," Knievel said. "People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner."

For the tall, thin daredevil, the limelight was always comfortable, the gab glib. To Knievel, there always were mountains to climb, feats to conquer.

"No king or prince has lived a better life," he said in a May 2006 interview with The Associated Press. "You're looking at a guy who's really done it all. And there are things I wish I had done better, not only for me but for the ones I loved."

He had a knack for outrageous yarns: "Made $60 million, spent 61. ...Lost $250,000 at blackjack once. ... Had $3 million in the bank, though."

He began his daredevil career in 1965 when he formed a troupe called Evel Knievel's Motorcycle Daredevils, a touring show in which he performed stunts such as riding through fire walls, jumping over live rattlesnakes and mountain lions and being towed at 200 mph behind dragster race cars.

In 1966 he began touring alone, barnstorming the West and doing everything from driving the trucks, erecting the ramps and promoting the shows. In the beginning he charged $500 for a jump over two cars parked between ramps.

He steadily increased the length of the jumps until, on New Year's Day 1968, he was nearly killed when he jumped 151 feet across the fountains in front of Caesar's Palace. He cleared the fountains but the crash landing put him in the hospital in a coma for a month.

His son, Robbie, successfully completed the same jump in April 1989.

In the years after the Caesar's crash, the fee for Evel's performances increased to $1 million for his jump over 13 buses at Wembley Stadium in London — the crash landing broke his pelvis — to more than $6 million for the Sept. 8, 1974, attempt to clear the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in a rocket-powered "Skycycle." The money came from ticket sales, paid sponsors and ABC's "Wide World of Sports."

The parachute malfunctioned and deployed after takeoff. Strong winds blew the cycle into the canyon, landing him close to the swirling river below.

On Oct. 25, 1975, he jumped 14 Greyhound buses at Kings Island in Ohio.

Knievel decided to retire after a jump in the winter of 1976 in which he was again seriously injured. He suffered a concussion and broke both arms in an attempt to jump a tank full of live sharks in the Chicago Amphitheater. He continued to do smaller exhibitions around the country with his son, Robbie.

Many of his records have been broken by daredevil motorcyclist Bubba Blackwell.

Knievel also dabbled in movies and TV, starring as himself in "Viva Knievel" and with Lindsay Wagner in an episode of the 1980s TV series "Bionic Woman." George Hamilton and Sam Elliott each played Knievel in movies about his life.

Evel Knievel toys accounted for more than $300 million in sales for Ideal and other companies in the 1970s and '80s.

Born Robert Craig Knievel in the copper mining town of Butte on Oct. 17, 1938, Knievel was raised by his grandparents. He traced his career choice back to the time he saw Joey Chitwood's Auto Daredevil Show at age 8.

"The phrase one-of-a-kind is often used, but it probably applies best to Bobby Knievel," said U.S. Rep. Pat Williams, D-Mont., who grew up with Knievel. "He was an amazing athlete... He was sharp as a tack, one of the smartest people I've ever known and finally, as the world knows, no one had more guts than Bobby. He was simply unafraid of anything."

Outstanding in track and field, ski jumping and ice hockey at Butte High School, Knievel went on to win the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A Men's ski jumping championship in 1957 and played with the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League in 1959.

He also formed the Butte Bombers semiprofessional hockey team, acting as owner, manager, coach and player.

Knievel also worked in the Montana copper mines, served in the Army, ran his own hunting guide service, sold insurance and ran Honda motorcycle dealerships. As a motorcycle dealer, he drummed up business by offering $100 off the price of a motorcycle to customers who could beat him at arm wrestling.

At various times and in different interviews, Knievel claimed to have been a swindler, a card thief, a safe cracker, a holdup man.

Evel Knievel married hometown girlfriend, Linda Joan Bork, in 1959. They separated in the early 1990s. They had four children, Kelly, Robbie, Tracey and Alicia.

Robbie Knievel followed in his father's footsteps as a daredevil, jumping a moving locomotive in a 200-foot, ramp-to-ramp motorcycle stunt on live television in 2000. He also jumped a 200-foot-wide chasm of the Grand Canyon.

Knievel lived with his longtime partner, Krystal Kennedy-Knievel, splitting his time between their Clearwater condo and Butte. They married in 1999 and divorced a few years later but remained together. Knievel had 10 grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

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posted 11-30-2007 07:33 PM                      

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the Sept. 8, 1974, attempt to clear the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in a rocket-powered "Skycycle."

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posted 11-30-2007 10:21 PM                       

quote: Frank Dubrois

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didn't he plow into the Snake River on a Rocket Cycle or something?

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posted 12-01-2007 04:08 AM                    

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Locals recall Evel's circus of '74

Times-News staff

Evel Knievel made Twin Falls the center of the universe for just one day.

In the boldest act of a life built upon audacious stunts, Knievel rocketed across the Snake River Canyon at the edge of a sleepy farm town, which exploded overnight into a media-frenzied cesspool of daredevil super fans and Hell's Angels.

Then, to the chagrin of those left behind, he ditched town without paying all the bills.

Knievel's death on Friday at age 69 offered those who witnessed the Snake River Canyon jump another opportunity to recollect the circus events of Sept. 8, 1974.

"People say, 'Where's Twin Falls?' and he did put us on the map," said Rex Lytle, owner of Lytle Signs in Twin Falls, who had a closer look at the jump than anyone. ABC Sports hired him to operate the crane truck and remove the cameras right after Knievel's jump.

Ray Barsness also remembers Knievel. More precisely, he remembers that the daredevil still owes him money.

Barsness, now 83, helped build 200 plywood portable toilets - "real nice ones," he said, with good-looking coats of paint. The toilets were placed on the 200 acres reserved for bikers who were camping out during the jump. But bikers will be bikers, he said. During the inevitable riot those fine new toilets were smashed to pieces and burned, along with a wooden cross that once adorned Shoshone Falls Park, a beer truck (after unloading the 2,600 cases of cold beer, which were never seen again) and virtually everything else at hand.

Knievel was supposed to make four payments of $25,000 for the toilets, but Barsness saw only three checks.

"(He was) always likable, but he's sure a con person," Barsness said.

The 'zoo'

Providing security for 15,000 patrons and some say it was more like 40,000 marauding bikers, thrill-seekers and assorted wanderers on Sept. 8, 1974 was a blur to the cops, who until then spent their slow summer days regulating the "good souls and true" who "mostly minded their business," as Steve Crump wrote in the Times-News on the 20th anniversary of the event.

"It was a zoo," said Dave Randall, a former Jerome County Sheriff's deputy who spent the day guarding the Perrine Bridge.

A Time magazine correspondent called the Twin Falls scene "a bizarre spectacle, garnished with machismo and the threat of death: the ultimate expression of the motorcycle culture - Fans from every state in the union formed a camper city that was soon awash in beer, dope, cocaine and false rumors of savage beatings and rapes."

Randall said deputies tried to keep the raging crowds from crossing into the desert on the north rim of the canyon where spectators didn't have to buy tickets. But they started running so fast that the deputies gave up.

A portion of the 106-foot dirt ramp built for his launch pad still marks the south edge of the canyon, within view of the bridge. It's one of the city's most-sought after tourist attractions, though it remains inaccessible on private land. The City of Twin Falls, however, has negotiated a deal to trade land for the site. Officials plan to complete a canyon rim trail that would make it more accessible for visitors.

Eye on the canyon

Knievel never doubted his ability to blast himself across the 1,800 canyon at the controls of his "skycycle" ��" in reality a large steam-power rocket.

"I was there and know that it took a lot of fortitude to make a jump into the unknown," said James J. May, a retired judge and attorney, who defended Knievel against many damage claims. "His theme for life was a quote from President Theodore Roosevelt suggesting that we become involved in the excitement of the events that spring up around each of us on a daily basis."

But he never made it to the north side. In fact, he barely cleared the rim before his parachute deployed, pulling him back like a giant hand and gently lowering him to the canyon floor as millions watched on live TV.

Knievel, already a famous motorcycle airman, settled on Twin Falls after the U.S. Interior Department told him he couldn't jump the Grand Canyon. He already knew the area from previous travels between his home in Butte, Mont., and Las Vegas, in addition to other memorable experiences.

"When my son, Robbie, was born in Butte, I was here - in jail," Knievel told a Twin Falls crowd in 1999, during a commemoration of the jump. "I had been in California, and when I heard Linda was in labor, I borrowed a little Ford from a guy and they caught me going 106 (mph) through that speed trap down there (Hollister). I had a (revoked) license, so the old judge threw my ass in jail for five days.

"I got back at him, though," he added. "I didn't have a pilot's license either when I flew over that canyon."

Keith Qualls, 73, and now a resident of Filer, remembers meeting the daredevil several times as Knievel pursued a spot of private property for his jump.

"He was wanting to jump the canyon, and I didn't know what to think," said Qualls, who along with his father and brother Tim, then the Twin Falls police chief, jointly leased the land to Knievel for three years.

"He was really kind of a nice guy, but he was kind of like Muhammad Ali - the more you talk, the more publicity you get," Qualls said.

As for the business deal, which Knievel described as being done over a handshake, Qualls didn't any complaints.

"He paid us what we asked and what we agreed on."

Flight and flop

Once the day of the jump finally arrived, state Rep. Leon Smith, R-Twin Falls, then a member of the City Council, watched directly from behind the ramp as a crowd of hundreds stood watch.

What happened next has been a matter of controversy for decades.

"I stood right at the back of the ramp when he climbed into his little mobile, and I watched his hands on the controls as he ignited it," Smith said. "As it started up the ramp, I watched his hand reach forward and pull something. Immediately after that a drogue shoot pulls out. It deployed and his parachute deployed with it, and so he just barely made it over the ramp and made it over on the south side of the canyon.

"It looked to me like he panicked, but he insisted that he didn't."

Qualls has a different take. Like Knievel, who blamed the botched jump on his cycle engineer, he believes the skycycle malfunctioned and in the process, probably saved the stuntman's life.

"If that parachute hadn't got come off right off that ramp he might have gone all the way to the interstate," Qualls said. "Anybody who thinks he pulled that on purpose, they're crazy. If that (chute) had whipped around that ramp and jerked off there, he would have been a goner."

Knievel left town one day later with minor injuries - and a host of disgruntled locals. Many claimed he never paid his contracted debts. But in a return visit to the city in 1999, he claimed otherwise.

"I had $3 million in a checking account in a bank in Butte, and I paid every bill that was presented to me," Knievel said.

The claim didn't take. Days after celebrating in Twin Falls for the anniversary, Knievel was given a summons by a Twin Falls resident, and a bill for $ $9,591.71 ��" plus interest for 25 years.

Staff writers Cass Friedman, David Cooper and Nate Poppino contributed to this report.

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The picture on top of this submitted page is the Perrin Bridge that is mentioned in the story. Yes, there is a lot of base jumping off that bridge, which is just on the outskirts of the city with Shoshone Falls just west of the bridge about 2miles - the falls higher than Niagra Falls. There's a big scenic lookout area just south of the bridge were people can look down to the bottom of the Snake River Canyon..and one, if look far to the east down the river, one can still see the dirt mound where his jump took place.



I was working that afternoon and couldn't watch this event which was covered by national television.

-Monte