Tribute To Evel Knievel, Montana Daredevil Extraordinaire

My wife and I knew Evel had been struggling to stay alive for a long time. We did not know he had passed from this world last fall, on November 30, 2007. The front page of a local newspaper featured a snow sculpture done as a tribute, and thus we found out.

The legendary daredevil and I had common roots in western Montana. Just five years older than me, he grew up in the rough and ready mining city of Butte. My own upbringing took place on a ranch six miles west of Drummond.

He took to motorcycles. I took to broncs and bulls. He became the best in the world at what he did. I...didn't. Oh, I got pretty good, just not THAT good. I did hit the pro ranks in rodeo, but then quit just when I'd gotten good enough to MAYBE qualify for the National Finals in bull riding if I hammered the highway hard and heavy for a full year. In the end, I decided the price was a little more than I preferred to pay and went on to other things.

Evel Knievel paid the price demanded on his toll road to fame without hesitation. You have to respect a man like that. Broken bones, coma, cougars, rattlesnakes or cars, he dealt with them all in turn.

When it came to motorcycles, sure, my wife and I once roared a Suzuki 1400 Intruder shaft drive cruiser through a hard right turn at 86 mph during a street race against a Harley Davidson Sportster....but mostly we were pretty calm riders, just out cruising for the joy of it. Matter of fact, after my wife's disabilities got severe enough, we quit riding altogether; the old luggage rack in the photo is the last piece of equipment we have left.

Evel, by contrast, leaves an astounding legacy that even includes entire motorcycles designed to celebrate his remarkable impact on our life and times. A museum? Of course there is an Evel Knievel Museum, too.

I've had many Butte connections myself over the years--they might do well as the subject of another Hub--but this one is about Evel, not me. And that means it is also about the roots he never forgot, the city he always acknowledged as his home town.

So much so that, with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis making every breath a struggle at Butte's high elevation, he still attended the Evel Knievel Days celebration as long as humanly possible. He wanted to give back as much to "his town" as he could, and he did just that.

In its mining heyday, Butte was known as The Richest Hill On Earth. Evel Knievel Days has brought this remarkable city back into the nation's limelight. Beyond that, it seems to me that by many standards, Evel lived The Richest Life On Earth. Certainly he was a contender for the title.

And I can now admit that he has always been one of my heroes.