Stuntwoman never heard the cheers

The CBS television network broadcast “Silent Victory: The Story of Kitty O’Neil” on the evening of Jun. 17, 1979.

Kitty Linn O’Neil was born in Corpus Christi, Texas on Mar. 24, 1946. She was still in diapers when simultaneously stricken with measles, mumps and what may have been smallpox. Her mother, a full-blooded Cherokee, saved the infant’s life by placing her in a bathtub of ice cold water to lower a life threatening fever. But there was nothing she could do to save her hearing.

Widowed by her husband’s death in a fatal plane, Patsy O’Neil suddenly had a profoundly deaf daughter to care for. She taught Kitty how to read lips – so well, in fact, many people who knew her in later years never suspected she had a hearing impairment – but drew the line at sign language.

By the third grade, Kitty was able to attend public school. About this time, she learned to play the cello and piano by feeling the music through her hands and feet. Meanwhile, Mrs. O’Neil embraced deafness as her calling and eventually helped to start the Listening Eyes School for the Deaf in Wichita Falls.

In grade school, Kitty began swimming competitively and soon devoted every waking hour to diving. Recognizing the teenager’s talent, Patsy moved the family in 1962 to Southern California so that Kitty could train under renowned coach Sammy Lee, a two-time gold medalist in platform diving.

Lee saw in the girl from Texas a future Olympian. He was confident Kitty would make the U.S. team for the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo. But spinal meningitis left her unable to walk much less to dive, and Kitty’s Olympic dreams were dashed

By the time Kitty had recovered from her latest illness, she had lost interest in diving. “It wasn’t scary enough for me,” she explained. In search of the next adrenalin rush, she tried water skiing, scuba diving, hang gliding and skydiving.

In the early seventies, Kitty moved onto speed sports on land and water. She set a record of 275 miles an hour for a woman on water and another on water skis of 104 miles an hour.

She met her future companion Hal Needham, a world class stuntman, in a motorcycle race. Kitty “hit a rut and (her) motorcycle crashed. When she got up, she took off her gloves and found parts of two fingers inside.” Emergency room doctors succeeded in reattaching the digits.

Needham and fellow stuntman Ron “Duffy” Hambleton were impressed by her toughness and eagerness to give anything a try no matter how dangerous. They invited Kitty to join Stunts Unlimited, the elite organization of professional risk takers who performed amazing stunts for movies and television shows.

Kitty shined as Hollywood’s first stuntwoman. Audiences and other stunt people to this day marvel at her on-screen exploits.

The “high fall” was her specialty. One of the most memorable was her head-first plunge from the twelfth story of a Sherman Oaks, California hotel for an episode of the TV show “Wonder Woman.” To avoid serious injury, she had to execute a perfect landing. “If I hadn’t hit the center of the (air) bag, I probably would have been killed.” Kitty also credited her size (five-two and 97 pounds) with minimizing the impact.

The “Wonder Woman” leap measured a record 127 feet. Kitty bettered that by 53 feet with a heart-pounding jump, also onto an inflated air bag, from a helicopter.

Her list of credits included, in addition to “Wonder Woman,” “Baretta,” “The Bionic Woman, “The Blues Brothers” and “Smokey and the Bandit II.” She flirted with drowning in a sinking jet plane for the film “Airport 77.”

Instead of a handicap, Kitty believed deafness helped her concentrate and maintain focus. “I know I’m deaf,” she said in a Washington Post interview. “But I’m still normal. The way I look at it, being handicapped is not a defect. People say I can’t do anything. I say to people, I can do anything I want.”

On top of everything else, Kitty was a speed demon behind the wheel. Many consider a blazing run across the Oregon desert on Dec. 6, 1976 the highlight of her land-speed career. Driving the three-wheeled SMI Motivator powered by hydrogen peroxide and “barely large enough to accommodate an expectant baboon,” according to a Sports Illustrated reporter, she averaged 512.71 mph on two runs and reached an astonishing top speed of 618 mph just 12 miles per hour shy of the world record.

Kitty O’Neil, who died of pneumonia in 2018 at the age of 72, said this in a 1979 appearance at the Holy Trinity School for the Deaf in Chicago: “Deaf people can do anything. When I was 18, I was told I couldn’t get a job because I was deaf. But I said someday I am going to be famous in sports, to show them I can do anything.”

And, as proof of her fame, how many people can say they have their own Mattel action figure!

“Unforgettable Texans” brings to life the once famous people no one remembers today. Order your copy for $24.00 by mailing a check to Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 130011, Spring, TX 77393.