Would have been 98 in February. Which is why I have to laugh at people who start whining about being old in their 40s.
In the film version of The Right Stuff, Yeager plays the crazy old prospector who shows up at the bar where all the test pilots hang out. Sam Shepard played Yeager in the film, and when you see the two of them standing next to one another, Shepard fucking towers over Yeager. (At least that's my memory of the scene, I can't find the clip where Yeager eyes up Sam as he walks into the bar.) I tried reading Yeager's autobiography but when he got to the part about being shot down over Germany, hiding out in a hut, and then bursting out of it and shooting Nazis after having both his kneecaps shot, before diving down a snow-covered mountain, I had to put it down. Just no way any human being could be such a badass. Now, maybe I'm wrong, and it did happen the way that Yeager described. I don't know but I do know that he did a lot to push the envelope, and that deserves respect.
to that top picture! He could put that on a billboard and impregnate every female driver on the road. Change my mind!
I saw this announced on a Navy facebook group as "Chuck Yeager, Air Force pilot who never landed on a carrier, dies at 97." Dad read his autobiography right after it came out. His reaction was that it read exactly like his own life up to the point where Dad got out of the service and Chuck stayed in.
