Against All Odds: My Story

by Norris, Chuck

  The first reply was, “Ten minutes.” The second reply was, “Six minutes.” The third reply was, “Two minutes.”

  Aaron later told me that he believed he was way ahead of me, so he slowed down as he got closer to the finish line. He was shocked when he crossed the finish line and six seconds later I came flying through. Steve McQueen was right. The most relaxed I ever felt was after driving that Nissan truck in an off-road race.

  In 1985, Michael Reagan, President Reagan's son, broke the world powerboat record from Chicago to Detroit with a time of twelve hours, thirty-four minutes, twenty seconds. In 1989, I was offered the opportunity to break Michael's world record in a race sanctioned by the American Power Boat Association. I jumped at the chance.

  I was to drive a forty-six-foot V-hull Scarab boat with twin 425-horsepower engines that reached speeds of seventy miles per hour! The course was 612 miles from the harbor in Chicago to the Renaissance Center in Detroit. My codriver was Walter Payton, famed running back for the Chicago Bears, and the throttleman was Eddie Morenz. My friend, Bob Wall, came along for the ride.

  We left the harbor in Chicago at 7 AM and had smooth running over the Great Lakes to Mackinac Island, where we refueled and then took off again, streaking across Lake Huron, headed for Detroit. We were ten miles from the finish line, and within reach of setting a new record, when we encountered a storm that knocked out our navigational system. We got lost in the Detroit channels for more than three hours before finding our way to the finish line. When we finally moored, Walter flopped down on the boat deck and said, “I'll never do this again!”

  Undaunted, the following year, I decided to try again to beat Michael Reagan's record. Try as I might, I couldn't talk Walter into returning with me, so I became the lone driver. Eddie Morenz returned as my throttle man, but I did all the driving myself. We had a smooth run, didn't get lost, and arrived in Detroit with a time of twelve hours, eight minutes, and forty-two seconds, bettering Michael's record by twenty-six minutes!

  I thought that would be the end of my boat-racing career, but a few months later, Al Copeland, the owner of Popeye's Chicken, asked me to replace him as the driver of his Popeye Super Powerboat.

  I had seen these powerboat races on television and was very impressed. The boats are fifty-foot-long catamarans with jet engines capable of speeds up to 140 miles per hour! A dozen boats race one another around buoys that stretch out over the water for miles. Again my competitive spirit kicked in, so I told Al I would do it.

  My first race was to be in Long Beach, California. I arrived on the morning of the race, and Al took me to see the boat for the first time. It looked like a spaceship, much more ominous up close than viewing it on television. I asked Al if I could test-drive it. “Oh, no, I'm sorry,” he said. “It's tuned just right for the race. You will just have to go for it.”

  At race time we pulled out to the starting line and took off. In seconds we were running neck and neck with five other boats, hitting speeds of more than 120 miles per hour! The first buoy we had to go around was about five miles from the start, and as we approached, I told Bobby, the throttle man, that I wasn't sure how to get around it with so many other boats around us. Bobby backed off the throttle, and the five other boats pulled in front of us. Suddenly the boat right in front of me hit a wake and flipped about twenty feet into the air. I barely managed to get around it as the catamaran crashed upside down on the water. When I finally got my heart out of my throat, I thought, Hey! This is a dangerous game! This will be my one and only race, but at least I can say I tried it.

  We raced hard, and just when it looked as though we had no chance, the two lead boats broke down, and we wound up winning the race! Now I was hooked! I raced superboats nine more times that year and finished the year in third place.

  The next year my team and I won the National Superboat Championship. Sadly, Stefano Casiraghi, the husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, was killed in one of the races, and his death became international news. He was only thirty years of age. I was under contract with Cannon Films, and Yoram Globus, my boss, heard about the tragic accident. “Is that the kind of racing you are doing?” Yoram asked.

  I said, “Yes, it is.”

  “Not anymore,” Yoram said bluntly.

  My boat-racing days were over. I had won the national superboat title, and I had broken a world record, so what more could I ask for? (Famous last words!) Well …

  As I previously mentioned, I've always had an incredible respect and immense regard for the men and women who serve in the United States Armed Forces. As a former Air Force man myself, I know all too well the many sacrifices these men and women make to defend our country and to fight for peace and justice around the world.

  That's why when I was invited to fly with the Blue Angels, I again jumped at the chance to live dangerously. I flew with the Blue Angels twice. On my first flight in 1991, Kevin, the pilot, buckled me in and told me, “Chuck, about 90 percent of my passengers throw up.”

  “Why did you have to tell me that?” I asked him. “The thought never entered my mind until now.”

  Soon after we took off, Kevin tried to get me to barf by doing barrel rolls and other maneuvers. Sure enough, I felt sick. I pulled out the barf bag, but I knew that Kevin would tell everyone that I threw up, so I swallowed it back down. When we landed, I was white as a sheet, but I didn't throw up!

  The next time I flew with the Blue Angels, I asked Wayne, the pilot, not to put me through that ordeal again. He said he wouldn't and he didn't. He asked me if I would like to see how he approached an aircraft carrier for a landing. “Sure!” I said.

  Wayne told me over the intercom that he would have to slow the jet down from a cruising speed of 550 knots to a landing speed of 140 knots. To do that he would have to bank the plane hard left, which would give it a G force of about six Gs.

  When we banked the jet, I saw a bright tunnel closing to complete darkness, and I blacked out for a moment. When the tunnel finally got bright again, I asked Wayne if he was OK.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I have a pressure suit on.”

  “Oh, good,” I said. “Can I have a pressure suit, too, next time?”

  One day at a White House function, I had the opportunity to meet the Secretary of the Navy. I said, “Mr. Secretary, I have spent two days on the USS Constellation. I've been on the USS Kennedy, and I've flown with the Blue Angels twice, but my dream is to land on an aircraft carrier.”

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He smiled and said, “I'll see what I can do.”

  About four months later I was invited to go to the Top Gun facility at Miramar, near San Diego, where I was to train for two days to prepare for my ride in an F-14 Tomcat and a landing on the USS Nimitz, which was 250 miles out at sea.

  When I arrived at the facility, I met several of the Top Gun pilots including the one who would be flying me. His nickname was Maverick. Tom Cruise chose Maverick's handle for the name of his character in the movie Top Gun.

  On the first day I was to train in water-survival techniques since we were scheduled to fly over the ocean. I was taken to a pool that looked to be a hundred feet long. I was wearing my flight gear and boots that felt like they weighed ten pounds each. I was told to swim to the other end of the pool. I was thinking, I don't know if I can make it with this flight gear on. The next thing I knew I was in the pool, swimming for the far end. I barely made it across. I was hanging on to the side thinking, I can't believe I made it, when I heard someone shout, “Now, come back!” Oh, boy, I thought, and started to swim back. I got about half way across, when I was so tired that I stopped kicking, and with the weight of the heavy boots pulling me down, I dropped straight to the bottom of the pool. I kicked up to look for help, but there wasn't any. I went down and popped up three more times, thinking, They're going to let me drown out here! Finally, I saw a life raft being shoved out toward me.

  “Climb into it!” I heard.

  I strug
gled into the raft, using my last ounce of strength.

  The next day I went into the altitude chamber with several military officers including an admiral with whom I was teamed. I told him about my water survival experience. “Ha! You didn't have to do that,” he said with a chuckle. “They just wanted to see what you were made of.”

  “Well, they found out!” I said.

  On the third day I was fitted with a flight pressure suit, and I was ready to go. Maverick and I took off from Miramar air base and headed out to sea to land on the Nimitz. As we approached the carrier, Maverick decided to do three touch-and-go landings before setting down on the deck.

  Following the third approach, Maverick brought the expensive jet in perfectly, bringing it to a stop with plenty of room to spare on the edge of the aircraft carrier. I climbed out of the fighter jet, toured the carrier, and shook hands with about five thousand sailors and Marines. Then I went up on the bridge to meet the captain.

  All too soon, it was time to take off for home. As we were heading back to the base, Maverick told me he was going to show me what it would be like to experience an aerial “dog fight” with an enemy aircraft. He flipped, twisted, and turned the jet every which way. After a few minutes, I felt my stomach doing much the same! I was getting real queasy. I pressed the intercom button, and said, “Maverick, we lost him.”

  Maverick laughed, and said, “Oh, I get your meaning.”

  CHAPTER 21

  A SIN THAT BECAME A BLESSING

  One morning as I was opening my mail, I came across a letter from a Dianna DeCioli. I opened the letter and started reading, wondering who this person was. I soon found out.

  “I am your daughter,” the letter said.

  The words nearly floored me.

  “My mother is Johanna,” the writer stated, a woman that I had known many years ago. Dianna went on to say that she was an adult now, married, and had a young daughter of her own. She expressed a desire to meet me to obtain a more accurate medical history. She closed the letter by saying that if I didn't contact her, she would never bother me again.

  My thoughts flashed back to August 1962, a week before I was to be discharged from the US Air Force. I was stationed at March Air Force base in Riverside, California. My brother, Wieland, had come to Riverside to keep me company until I was discharged. My wife, Dianne, was in Los Angeles getting our apartment ready for us to move into when I came home from the service.

  One night Wieland and I decided to go out and have some fun. We went to a nightclub where a band was playing and lots of people were dancing. We sat down at a table and ordered a drink, just as a dance contest was announced.

  Wieland, who was an incredible dancer, asked an attractive girl at a nearby table to dance with him. They danced up a storm and won the contest! Their prize for winning the contest was free beer for the night.

  Wieland brought his dance partner and another girl over to our table and introduced them to me. His dance partner was Joyce, and the other young woman with long auburn hair was her older sister, Johanna. The four of us danced the night away.

  Wieland and I took the sisters out a couple times that week and dated them several more times over the next few months. To my shame I never told Johanna that I was married. One night Johanna and I went to a drive-in movie alone, and we engaged in sexual intercourse, right there in the car. It was the first and only time we were sexually intimate.

  Although Johanna and Joyce were great girls and fun to be with, I knew that from an ethical, Christian perspective, what I was doing was wrong. It would be an understatement to admit that I felt guilty about being unfaithful to my wife and not being honest with Johanna. It was a situation that I knew must end, so I stopped seeing Johanna.

  That had been many years ago. Now suddenly it seemed as though it were yesterday, as I stood reading a letter from a woman claiming to be Johanna's daughter. When I snapped out of my trance, I stared at the letter for a long time, wondering what course of action I should take. The return address on the letter was a town located near my mother's home, about seventy miles away from mine. I called Mom and read the letter to her.

  “What do you want to do, Son?”

  “Would you call Dianna and talk with her, and let me know what you think?” Mom did better than that. She agreed to a face-to-face encounter with the young woman claiming to be my daughter.

  Mom invited Dianna to her home so they could meet. That afternoon I sat by the phone anxiously waiting for Mom's report. When the call finally came, Mom was brief and to the point. “I want you to come over to my house right now. Dianna is here.” She and Dianna were waiting for me.

  I had no idea what to expect, so I asked my brother Aaron to go with me. As we were driving to Mom's house, I asked myself, How will I know if she really is my daughter?

  When we arrived at Mom's house, I was nervous, anxious, and scared. I walked into the living room and nearly had my breath knocked out of me. There, standing before me, was a beautiful young lady. I was stunned, but the moment I saw her, I knew. I didn't need DNA or blood tests; there was no doubt in my mind that she was my daughter. I went to her, wrapped my arms around her, and we both started crying. At that moment it was as if I had known her all of her life.

  Later Dianna told me how her mother had gotten pregnant from that one and only encounter, and when she was born, her mother named her Dianna but called her Dina (pronounced “Deena”). Johanna got married soon after Dina was born, so Dina always believed that the man her mother married was her father. Johanna never mentioned a word otherwise and probably wouldn't have disclosed the fact that I was her biological father had it not been for an idle conversation when Dina was sixteen.

  Dina came home from school one day and overheard her mother talking about me with a friend. “Chuck Norris? What does he have to do with us?” Dina wanted to know. Johanna later confirmed to Dina that I was her biological father but that I was married and had children, and she shouldn't disrupt my life.

  Ten years later Dina read in the newspapers that I was divorced. It was then that she decided to write to me with the approval of her husband, Damien.

  Dina and I had to cut our visit short because I was scheduled to leave for Israel to begin work on a new film. We assured each other that we would catch up when I returned. While I was in Israel, however, Damien's company transferred him to Dallas. Dina later told me that she was most upset about the move because she felt that after finally finding her real father, she would rarely get a chance to see me, if at all.

  As is often said, “God works in mysterious ways.” While I was in Israel, I accepted the offer to film the TV series Walker, Texas Ranger … in Dallas. When I learned that Dina and her family were also in Dallas, I was convinced that this was God's plan for bringing us together.

  Since that day in Mom's living room in 1991, Dina, Damien, and their three children, Gabrielle, Dante, and Elijah, have become a blessed part of my life. I have also spoken with Johanna several times, and have apologized for my deceit.

  “A lot of time has gone by, Johanna, and I can never bring back the years,” I acknowledged. “I wish I could have helped you more at the time of Dina's birth. We were so young, and I had nothing to offer you. But I can help you now, and if you will allow me, I'd like to make restitution and try to make it up to you and Dina. I know I made a lot of mistakes in the past. I'm truly sorry. Would you please forgive me?”

  “Yes, of course, I forgive you,” Johanna said. “And I know that God has forgiven us. But if it had not been for that night, Dina would not be here, and I can't imagine my life without her.”

  Certainly, I know now that God does not condone premarital or extramarital sexual relationships. But I've also discovered that there is no such thing as an “illegitimate child.” Every baby is “legitimate” in God's eyes; every child is precious in his sight. Our actions that brought about that baby were wrong. But Johanna was right. Dina is an incredible person, and I am blessed to have her as my daughter, and Da
mien, her wonderful husband, as my son-in-law. Gabrielle (Gabi) is an angel. Dante is all boy, and Elijah (Eli) calls me “Paka.” As a baby, Gabi had mispronounced “Papa,” and the name stuck. To this day my grandchildren on Dina's side of the family still call me Paka.

  Most heartwarming to me, from the first time we met, Dina called me Dad. My sons, Mike and Eric, have accepted Dina as a sister, just as she has accepted them as her brothers. Today we are one big, happy family. My sin was horrible, but God took what Satan intended for evil and used it for good. As Johanna said, “It was a sin that became a blessing.”

  CHAPTER 22

  WALKER, TEXAS RANGER

  While I was in Israel filming the movie Hellbound, in 1992, my manager, Mike Emery, called and asked if I would be interested in doing a weekly TV series with CBS called Walker, Texas Ranger, a modern-day story of a Texas Ranger with old-fashioned values who champions right over wrong. At first, I was reluctant, but Mike piqued my interest when he told me that the series would be about a cowboy-type law officer fighting crime in a modern Texas city.

  “Let me think about it, Mike. I'm not really sure I want to do television,” I said. “After all, it would be a big gamble, and if the series isn't successful, it could adversely affect my film career.”

  But the thought of playing a Texas Ranger intrigued me. When I was growing up, my favorite movies were Westerns. Their overriding message was the Code of the West—friendship, loyalty, and integrity—values I felt ought to be reflected in a television series. I decided to take the risk of jumping from a movie career to television.

  I believe that the public wants and needs heroes, a John Wayne-type, American hero. Many people, especially youngsters, want someone with whom they can identify, a man or woman who is self-reliant, stands on his or her own two feet, and is not afraid to face adversity. I decided that if I was going to do a series, this should be the one. My personal beliefs became the core traits of the lead character in the television series, Cordell Walker.