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Evel Knievel "Loses Fight For Life"

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Famous motorcycle stuntman loses liver fight. Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel was born in Butte, Montana, in 1938, the first of two children born to Robert E. and Ann Kehoe Knievel. His surname is of German origin; his great-great-grandparents on his father's side emigrated to the United States from Germany.[3] Robert and Ann divorced in 1940, after the birth of their second child, Nic. Both parents decided to leave Butte. Evel was raised by paternal grandparents, Ignatius and Emma Knievel. At the age of eight, Robert Knievel attended a Joie Chitwood Auto Daredevil Show, which he gave credit to for his later career choice, to become a motorcycle daredevil. Almost every jump he did was on a Harley Davidson motorcycle.
Knievel ended high school after sophomore year and got a job in the copper mines with the Anaconda Mining Company as a diamond drill operator . He was then promoted to surface duty where he drove a large earth mover. Knievel was dismissed when he made the earth mover do a motorcycle-type wheelie and drove it into Butte's main power line. The incident left the city without electricity for several hours. Idle, Knievel began to find himself in more and more trouble around Butte. After a police chase in 1956 in which he crashed his motorcycle, Knievel was taken to jail on a charge of reckless driving. When the night jailer came around to check the roll, he noted Robert Knievel in one cell and William Knofel in the other. Knofel was well known as "Awful Knofel" ("awful" rhyming with "Knofel") so Knievel began to be referred to as Evel Knievel ("Evel" rhyming with "Knievel"). He chose this misspelling because of his last name and because he didn't want to be considered "evil."
Always looking for new thrills and challenges, Knievel participated in local professional rodeos and ski-jumping events, including winning the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A Men's ski jumping championship in 1957. During the late 1950s, Knievel joined the United States Army. His athletic ability allowed him to join the track team where he was a pole vaulter. After his army stint, Knievel returned to Butte where he met and married his first wife, Linda Joan Bork.
Shortly after getting married, Knievel (may have) left Butte to play minor pro hockey, joining the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League in 1959.[4] (hockeydb.com has no record of this.)[5][6] Realizing that he wasn't talented enough to make it into the National Hockey League and that the real money in sports was made by owning a team, Knievel returned to Butte and started the Butte Bombers, a semi-pro hockey team. To help promote his team and earn some money, he convinced the 1960 Olympic Czechoslovakian hockey team to play the Butte Bombers in a warm-up game to the Olympics. Knievel was ejected from the game minutes into the third period and left the stadium. When the Czechoslovakian officials went to the box office to collect the expense money the team was promised, workers discovered the game receipts had been stolen. The U.S. Olympic Committee wound up paying the Czechoslovakian team's expenses to avoid an international incident.
After the birth of his first son, Kelly, Knievel realized that he needed to come up with a new way to support his family financially. Using the hunting and fishing skills his grandfather had taught him, Knievel started the Sur-Kill Guide Service. He guaranteed that if a hunter employed his service and paid his fee, they would get the big game animal they wanted or he would refund their money. Business was very good until game wardens realized that Knievel was taking his clients into Yellowstone National Park to find prey. As a result of this poaching, Knievel had to end the new business venture.
During December 1961, Knievel, who was learning about the culling of elk in Yellowstone Park, decided to hitchhike from Butte to Washington, D.C. to raise awareness and to have the elk relocated to areas where hunting was permitted. After his conspicuous trek (he hitchhiked with a 54-inch wide rack of elk antlers and a petition with 3,000 signatures), he presented his case to Representative Arnold Olsen, Senator Mike Mansfield, and Kennedy administration Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. As a result of his efforts, the slaughter was stopped, and the animals have since been regularly captured and relocated to areas of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho.[7]
Without a way to support his family, Knievel recalled the Joie Chitwood show he saw as a boy and decided that he could do something similar using a motorcycle. Promoting the show himself, Knievel rented the venue, wrote the press releases, set up the show, sold the tickets and served as his own master of ceremonies. After enticing the small crowd with a few wheelies, he proceeded to jump a twenty-foot-long box of rattlesnakes and two mountain lions. Despite landing short and having his back wheel hit the box containing the rattlesnakes, Knievel managed to land safely.

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