Chuck Norris, Icon Of American Machismo Who Returned to Faith, Dies At 86
Even Chuck Norris’s granddaughter bought into the memes that described her Papa as indestructible. He was, as she wrote recently, the man who “counted to infinity twice, the man who got bit by a cobra and the cobra died.”
Chuck Norris didn’t do pushups, she added; he “would push the earth down.”
Norris, the famed martial artist and old-school action hero, died Thursday, March 19, at the age of 86. His family confirmed the “sudden passing” a day later, amid reports of a brief hospitalization in Hawaii.
Yet Norris seemed destined to live on as a sort of mythical figure—a one-time underdog who’d conquered several lives: Air Force veteran, martial arts expert, big-screen lawman, accidental internet hero and, in more recent years, advocate for conservative values and his Christian faith.
Born Carlos Ray Norris on March 10, 1940, in Oklahoma, the bearded actor was originally named after Carlos Berry, a local minister who’d impacted Norris’s father, according to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “Chuck” became Norris’s lasting moniker just as he reached adulthood, around the time he was stationed in South Korea as an air policeman.
The oldest of three brothers, Norris later described his upbringing as challenging: His mother was a devout Christian credited for her frequent prayers, but his father battled alcoholism. His parents divorced when he was 16, and his younger brother, Wieland, was killed in Vietnam in 1970. So Norris found more purpose overseas, training in Tang Soo Do, a martial art often dubbed “Korean Karate.”
Norris’s fast growth as a fighter led him to international tournaments, where he eventually crossed paths with Hong Kong’s Bruce Lee, one of the most influential martial artists of all time. Soon the two costarred in “The Way of the Dragon,” a box office smash for its blend of combat and comedy, and Norris began headlining a string of his own action movies throughout the ’70s and ‘80s.
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Cody Benjamin is senior news writer at Christianity Today.