Legacy MattersGrowing up, every one knew who the handsome, dare-devil Evel Knievel was, so fearless was he.
"Who do you think you are -- Evel Knievel?" asked thousands of mothers around the country.
But like all of us will sooner or later, he grew older and died yesterday of pulmonary fibrosis.
A last interview in USA Today
His ravaged, 155-pound body isn't composed of original parts. He has a new liver and a replacement hip, and most recently doctors inserted a drug pump in his abdomen. It gives little reprieve from the excruciating pain in a fused spine mangled by hundreds of perilous, cringe-inducing motorcycle jumps from the 1960s and '70s.
For years he cheated death, sometimes spectacularly so. Numerous crashes cemented his legend and all but guaranteed premature infirmity. These days, in what might be his last great gamble, Evel flies down the cosmic ramp of his final jump — the leap of faith.
While he has avoided the inevitable countless times, he no longer feels invincible. In fact, the bank robber-turned-international icon sounds apprehensive. After decades of hard jumps and harder living, including bouts with alcoholism, Evel tries to bridge the psychological chasm between mortality and eternity.
At the end, his son said, Evel realized that love is everything .
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The quest to uncover value and meaning from his earthly existence has greater urgency these days. Evel takes a notepad off a chair-side table and begins to read something that sounds like a eulogy, which friends say he has written.
"I hope I have lived a life that matters … I am ready to leave my loved ones …
"My wealth, my fame will amount to naught … My grudges, frustrations, resentments and jealousies will finally disappear."
A few months later, he converted to Christianity.
Knievel told how he had refused for 68 years to convert to Christianity because he didn’t want to surrender his lifestyle of "the gold and the gambling and the booze and the women." He explained his conversion experience by saying, "All of a sudden, I just believed in Jesus Christ."
Evel Knievel, the American motorcycle stunt rider who has died aged 69, combined a considerable talent for self-promotion with a hazardous capacity for bravery; among the several world records he held was that for the most bones broken by one person, 433
Tall, blonde and nearly handsome, in the 1970s Knievel appealed to America's love of excess, and to her need to be convinced that she had not gone soft, that the pioneer spirit still thrived.
Last ride for Evel Knievel, man of steel and scars
At 27, he became co-owner of a motorcycle shop. To attract customers, he announced he would jump 12 metres over parked cars and a box of rattlesnakes and continue on past a mountain lion tethered at the other end. Before a thousand people, he did the stunt but failed to fly far enough; his bike came down on the rattlesnakes. The audience was in awe.
"Right then," he said, "I knew I could draw a big crowd by jumping over weird stuff."
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He underwent as many as 15 major operations to relieve severe trauma and repair broken bones — skull, pelvis, ribs, collarbone, shoulders and hips. "I created the character called Evel Knievel, and he sort of got away from me," he said.