Steve McQueen

by Greg Laurie

  Steve McQueen had plans to retire here. The story goes that he intended to open an old-time general store where folks could brew their own coffee and sit around a potbellied stove, like on that popular old TV show Green Acres. It’s hard to picture McQueen as Sam Drucker, but who am I to quibble with another man’s dream?

  Sun Valley is a prosperous mishmash of both vintage and modern—saloons, mountain homes, mom-and-pop stores, ski chalets, and new age buildings. The city boasts a first-class arts scene, a comprehensive bus system, a state-of-the-art YMCA, and plenty more big-city amenities. It’s easy to see why a person would want to retire here.

  There are more pickup trucks than Mercedes—and there are plenty of them—on the main drag, so whichever store is selling flannel and jeans is doing a bang-up business. The one selling electric shavers, not so much. And it’s not everywhere you see a gas station with camouflage painted pumps. Not sure what the message here is, but if I were driving the local Welcome Wagon, I think I’d recommend that new residents of Sun Valley keep their Gucci clothes and elitist attitudes under wraps, at least during the daytime.

  On my way to my destination I drive by the private road that leads to the home and resting place of Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway. When he first started coming here in the 1930s, he stayed at the historic Sun Valley Lodge, where I’ve got a reservation. Later the famous writer brought his sons here to fish and hunt, and in 1959 Hemingway plunked down fifty thousand dollars on a two-story, log cabin-style home on a dozen acres north of the downtown area. Two years later he took his life in the foyer of the house. Interesting that two of the premier macho men of the twentieth century—Ernest Hemingway and Steve McQueen—wanted to spend their final years here.

  About a mile later I pull into the driveway of Barbara McQueen’s house. I didn’t need GPS to find it, having only to look for the artwork in the yard—a vintage leopard-skinned truck with a wild collection of skis sticking out of the cab in every direction, like Don King’s hair. I love it! Tall pine trees and hedges shield the two-story, log-cabin home built in the ’40s.

  It’s an unseasonably warm day in the mountains—seventy high-altitude, sunshine-infused degrees. Before I even step out of my rental car, a chocolate lab dog is bounding over to check me out. He’s wary but friendly and accompanies me to the front door where his owner is waiting.

  In speaking with her, I can see that the sudden loss of the love of her life, despite being more than thirty-five years ago, remains devastating, still affecting her to the present day.

  “Barbara?”

  “My friends call me Barbi,” she says with a warm smile. “Come on in and make yourself at home.”

  It would take a lot longer than a day for that to happen because I’ve never been in a home like this before. In the living room sits a kingsized bed and a dining table adorned with leather vests, cowboy hats, and Native American drums. Scattered about are mannequins sporting electric pink and green wigs, straw hats, leather saddles, antique toys, glittering skulls, Old West figurines, and Wizard of Oz dolls, a Schwinn bike wrapped in Christmas lights, a vintage cigarette dispensing machine, and lots of rock and roll photography from the 1970s.

  I see numerous signs of Steve McQueen—a photo of him and motorcycle racing buddy Bud Ekins, all busted up after the 1964 Olympic trials; a Bonham’s poster of Steve soaking himself off after a motorcycle run; and a picture of him in a racing suit and foot cast after a 1970 racing victory at Sebring. McQueen’s favorite antique toys and other memorabilia are displayed throughout the house. The latter includes a Native jacket he wore in Alaska for a Bob Hope USO Tour, a framed contact sheet of McQueen at Loyola Marymount discussing An Enemy of the People, the rocking chair where he relaxed outside his Santa Paula hangar, and the brass bed he slept in for the last year of his life.

  Each day for Steve and Barbi was an adventure, whether riding his perfectly restored vintage Indian motorcycles or taking a flight in his classic Stearman biplane or looking in antique stores for discarded and hidden treasures.

  We head for the four-car garage, which Barbi calls her “girl cave.” It’s styled as eclectically as the house, with a 1962 Ford stepside truck (with a mattress, pillows, and Steve’s Navajo rug in the truck bed), a dining table and chairs from a local thrift store, her grandmother’s couch, old bicycles, and a TV and entertainment system. The glass garage door opens onto a beautiful backyard with a cozy fire pit and tantalizing views of the ski runs on Baldy.

  We settle on the couch, and Barbi gets right down to brass tacks.

  For a few minutes, she asks to talk about some spiritual questions she’s been thinking about. Happy to do that, of course, and in speaking with her, I can see that the sudden loss of the love of her life, despite being more than thirty-five years ago, remains devastating, still affecting her to the present day.

  She had been a young, beautiful lady in her midtwenties, handpicked by a giant movie star to be his girlfriend, eventually his wife. Her life changed overnight.

  Each day for Steve and Barbi was an adventure, whether riding his perfectly restored vintage Indian motorcycles or taking a flight in his classic Stearman biplane or looking in antique stores for discarded and hidden treasures.

  They were planning for the future, which included retiring in the place I was visiting, sitting in one of Steve’s favorite rocking chairs. Then really, without much warning, it was all gone.

  To Barbi, Steve McQueen was not a movie star. He was her best friend, the love of her life, as well as her husband. A part of her is gone.

  I knew all about that. About sudden loss. At the age of thirty-three, our oldest son Christopher was killed in an automobile accident on a Southern California freeway—July 24, 2008. Whenever a loved one is taken away suddenly from you like that, it is life-altering and, frankly, not easy to recover from.

  I talk with Barbi about the pain and heartache my wife, Cathe, and I still experience, then listen with compassion as she speaks about the man, her husband, who’s been gone now for decades. A man she still loves. To Barbi, Steve McQueen was not a movie star. He was her best friend, the love of her life, as well as her husband.

  A part of her is gone.

  I share with Barbi how the hope of a future reunion with my son one day in heaven is a source of real comfort for us. I tell her how, when we believe in Jesus Christ, we can know with confidence that we will see our loved ones again who have died in faith, and that the more I’ve explored Steve McQueen’s story, the more confident I am that he possessed that kind of faith.

  I understand Barbi’s disinterest in people who would want to exploit her husband’s memory. She certainly saw her share of them during his dying days—shucksters and hucksters making false promises that could never be kept. This is America, of course, home of a free press, so do I need Barbi’s permission to tell a story that’s comprised of historical fact? No. Not really.

  But I do want her blessing more than anything.

  I believe this story, the story of a movie star who had it all— great wealth, fame, beautiful women, cars, homes, all the material wealth anyone could ever want—yet who yearned for and then finally found something, some One, more powerful and satisfying than anything else in his life would be an inspiration to the whole world, potentially influencing untold others to do likewise.

  To show her the kinds of things I’d want to share about him, I rattle off some of his charitable deeds I’d read about, such as giving time to residents at Boys Republic, a facility for wayward youth; donations he made to an orphanage in Taiwan; sending a cancer-stricken youth and his family from the Make-A-Wish Foundation to Disneyland in a limousine and picking up the entire tab; contributing to a Catholic church in Chicago; even personally adopting a teen on the set of The Hunter and quite possibly saving her life. Such things, I say, show that all the things Steve had gone through as a boy—all the suffering and neglect—produced a man who, although usually hard on the outside, possessed a soft center, especially when it c
ame to kids. He knew what it was like to walk in their shoes.

  Barbi nods a few times while I talk, and when I pause she looks me in the eye and says, “Steve was fiercely private because he always had people coming at him for something or another, and he could never get a moment’s rest. I think there are two things a man should go to his grave without ever having to reveal—his politics and his religion. A man needs to keep something for himself.”

  Moments later we’re in her black Hummer H3, heading for one of Sun Valley’s most fashionable restaurants. “It’s Arnold Schwarzenegger’s favorite place to eat when he’s in town,” Barbi tells me. I can see why.

  I was hoping for a nod to do this book, but that sure doesn’t sound promising. A moment later she throws me for an even bigger loop.

  “Steve never talked to me about religion. One day he came home and said, ‘We’re going to church.’ First we went dress shopping for me, and what we bought was a bit dowdy. They had to at least come down to my knees.” Noting my look of surprise, Barbi laughs, and says, “Yes, he was a bit of a chauvinist.

  “Sure, we went to church every Sunday,” she continues, “but we never really spoke about it when we got home. I figured it was a private matter to him, and if he wanted to bring it up, he could. I know it made him feel good, but we never really got into a discussion about why we went. I was just trying to be a good wife.”

  As I try to wrap my head around this, sensing a bit of a dead end, Barbi says, “You hungry? I’ll bet you haven’t eaten in a few hours.”

  Moments later we’re in her black Hummer H3, heading for one of Sun Valley’s most fashionable restaurants. “It’s Arnold Schwarzenegger’s favorite place to eat when he’s in town,” Barbi tells me. I can see why. Our waitress brings us a bread basket and a dish of real butter, and I order a cup of hot apple cider, meatloaf with gravy, and mashed potatoes. Barbi has crab cakes.

  It’s Mexican hot chocolate with four shots of espresso, and now it’s unlikely I’ll sleep at all before Christmas.

  As we eat and chat about lots of different things, including my love for the movies, I confess my fondness for films about organized crime. We both laugh. Barbi says she hasn’t been to a theater to see a film since 1974, when she saw The Towering Inferno starring McQueen and Paul Newman. Besides that one, she adds, the only movies of her late husband’s that she’s seen are The Blob and part of The Magnificent Seven on television recently.

  “I can’t watch his movies,” she says. “It’s still too painful.”

  I tell her I can relate. Whenever I see a photo of my son Christopher, it triggers such a flood of memories, many of them painful, reminded of the tremendous loss, still so fresh to us and to many others who loved him. We share a real moment of understanding without words.

  The food is wonderful, and for dessert she recommends the restaurant’s signature cheesecake with raspberry sauce. It’s over the moon, and now I’m so stuffed I’m afraid that as soon as we plop back down on that comfortable couch, I’ll fall into a food coma. But our next stop takes care of that—a coffee shop a few blocks away where I order a specialty of the house: the “Keith Richards.” It’s Mexican hot chocolate with four shots of espresso, and now it’s unlikely I’ll sleep at all before Christmas.

  Driving down the town’s main street, Barbi points out the Pioneer Saloon where she and Steve enjoyed many a steak and baked potato dinner. She’s never been much for cooking, she says, and they ate out a lot. “The Pioneer doesn’t care who you are,” she said. “If there was a line and Steve McQueen showed up, he had to wait just like everybody else. That’s why he liked this place.”

  “When Steve died, I was just a kid,” Barbi says softly, “just starting to find out what true love was. I was robbed . . .”

  On Highway 93 she shows me what celebrity lives where—some of the biggest names in entertainment. Then after five miles or so, we pull up to a brown wooden emporium and RV lot that Steve wanted to buy and turn into his general store, called “Queenies.” (It’s also, Barbi says, where Marilyn Monroe was stranded in a blizzard while filming the 1956 movie Bus Stop.) Steve’s plan never got off the ground, though, because city fathers threw too many roadblocks in his path. “Idaho politics are difficult for outsiders to comprehend,” she says with a shrug.

  We pull back out on the highway and cross onto a frontage road, stopping after a while at a sign announcing the entrance to “The Last Chance Ranch.” Steve bought the five-acre property in 1978, right after he and Barbi got together.

  On it are a two-story log cabin and guesthouse for which Steve personally drew up plans. But he never saw them completed because of the disease that ravaged him so quickly and the frantic quest for a cure that took them from their Gem State Shangri-la to a grubby clinic in Mexico run by a dentist with no expertise in treating cancer—not even a lab or basic x-ray equipment, where McQueen subjected himself to a daily battery of colonics, enemas, liver and vinegar flushes, Epsom salt drinks, castor oil IV drips, and other quack remedies in hopes of saving his life.

  Barbi looks off into the distance and takes in a deep breath. I’m holding mine. Finally she smiles kind of wanly and says, “It’s nice . . . I see what you’re trying to do.”

  Now at the Last Chance Ranch, it all comes flooding back. “When Steve died, I was just a kid,” Barbi says softly, “just starting to find out what true love was. I was robbed . . . .” I can only imagine the pain she’s endured all these years. Anything I might say would be intrusive and inadequate, so I say nothing.

  Finally back at Barbi’s house, I take out my laptop and ask her to watch a “sizzle reel” of the proposed documentary I have in mind, to be directed by Jon Erwin (Mom’s Night Out, Woodlawn). It’s just five minutes long but ideally conveys what I want to do with this project. She watches impassively until, midway through the reel, a close-up of Steve McQueen’s face appears on the screen. I flinch as she jerks her head away from the image, almost as if she’d received an electrical shock. For a moment I contemplate turning it off. Maybe I’ve overstepped my welcome. Maybe I’m being insensitive to her feelings. But I let it play on, and when it ends, Barbi looks off into the distance and takes in a deep breath. I’m holding mine. Finally she smiles kind of wanly and says, “It’s nice . . . I see what you’re trying to do.”

  Does that mean the project is a go? I’m not at all sure and am frankly afraid to press Barbi for a definitive answer. My visit has obviously stirred up so many memories and emotions in her, and I feel a stab of guilt for all the pain I’ve resurrected.

  But then Barbi turns, looks me in the eye and smiles, this time not wanly at all. And she emphatically nods her head.

  No words are necessary.

  Thank God.

  For the next half hour, we talk about my intention to travel around the country in my Ford Mustang, mapping out Steve’s path to eternal salvation. Barbi knows it’s likely to take me to some dark corners of his life, but she knows as well that the result will potentially help thousands of people in their own search for peace and meaning in this crazy thing we call life.

  An involuntary yawn from Barbi tells me it’s time to say good-bye. As she walks me to my car, I struggle to find words to express the extent of my gratitude for the time and open heart this remarkable woman has so freely shared—and the vital blessing she has bestowed on my mission. Barbara McQueen is an extraordinary human being.

  “So long, preacher man. Safe travels.”

  We hug and I’m off.

  DON’S GARAGE

  _____

  Back in Orange County, my top priorities are, in order of importance, to kiss Cathe and then call my friend and longtime mechanic Don Oakes.

  Don, as I’ve said, is an old-school classic car guy. He’s a few years older than me, a real salt-of-the-earth type. He has rough hands, tousled hair, and perpetually sunburned skin and always dresses so casually that if he ever put on a suit, I don’t think I would recognize him. He’s usually smiling, especially when talking ab
out cars—a fire and passion that’s never wavered. It remains his fountain of youth. Whenever he gets to talking on the subject, he instantly goes from being seventy-seven years old to seventeen.

  Don’s garage in Riverside is about an hour’s drive from our house and is strictly a functional workspace. Definitely a no-frills spot. No polished or mirrored epoxy floors, hydraulic lifts, or recessed lighting. In the past he worked on every make and model, including his amazing, perfectly restored Woodie, but now he specializes in Mustangs. Among the plethora of cool Mustangs in his stable is a tribute Shelby Mustang GT500 (also known as “Eleanor,” the car Nicholas Cage drove in Gone in 60 Seconds) and a “Black Mamba” Mustang with all the cool aftermarket fixings. He’s also got the Bullitt tribute car he lent to my son Jonathan on his wedding day, the one I unsuccessfully tried to buy from Don before finding my own. All told, he’s got about eight Mustangs scattered about the place in various states of restoration and repair.

  He has rough hands, tousled hair, and perpetually sunburned skin and always dresses so casually that if he ever put on a suit, I don’t think I would recognize him.

  Mine was only partially restored when I bought it in 2015. It also had a few mechanical issues. So I asked Don to bring her up to speed for my impending road trip. He’s been working on it for almost a month and a half.

  One of the major problems concerned the front springs. Every time the Bullitt cruised over a bump in the road, it scraped the wheel well. The sound was almost as alarming as the high-pitched, not-very-Bullitt-like shriek that came from the driver (me) each time it happened. I frequently had to remind myself that McQueen wasn’t cool because he drove the Mustang, but rather the Mustang was cool because McQueen drove it!