‘Sometimes I wish I hadn’t survived. They took the life that I had. They have taken everything
HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAPTAIN AMERICA. MARION MCMULLEN LOOKS AT THE SUPERHERO WHO IS TURNING 80
AFTER being blasted with a shotgun on his own doorstep, Joe Clarke should feel lucky to be alive.
But the shooting victim has revealed how the gun attack he survived almost 15 years ago is now slowly killing him.
Joe was a fit and healthy dadof-two with a lucrative oil rig career when his life was turned upside down by a knock on the door in 2007.
Finding himself faced with the barrel of a sawn-off shotgun on the doorstep of his Consett home, Joe turned and tried to run for his life.
But he was blasted in the back with around 150 pellets, which became embedded in his back, neck and head, and penetrated vital organs.
Miraculously Joe survived the attack, but medics said it would be too dangerous to operate and remove the shrapnel, including two pieces wedged in his heart.
Now he has revealed the devastating impact the gun wounds have had on his health, and how they could still take his life.
The 43-year-old said: “I just can’t believe my life has ended up like this.
“It’s just a constant struggle.
“It’s killing us slowly. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t survived. They took the life that I had. They have taken everything.”
Joe was shot at his home, on Fairways in Consett, in December 2007.
Despite having run ins with the police in the past, Joe co-operated with the investigation in the hope that justice would be done.
But he was left devastated when the case against five people accused of plotting his murder collapsed after blunders by detectives from Durham Constabulary.
And as he came to terms with the fact that those behind the shooting would walk free, Joe was also living with the devastating physical effects of the gun attack.
Doctors
said
the
shooting
could have shortened his life expectancy and he would have to live with the pellets inside him for the rest of his life.
In 2012, Joe told our sister newspaper The Chronicle that he had fled his hometown as he no longer felt safe in Consett.
And he started a new life elsewhere in the North East, without even telling members of his family where he had gone.
But following a number of family bereavements Joe decided to return to Consett.
“I just thought I don’t want to keep running away,” he said.
“I just want a quiet life now. That’s all I have ever wanted.”
Joe says he now suffers arthritis caused by the shooting.
He has undergone 20 operations and needs regular X-rays to check the pellets inside him have not moved to more dangerous positions.
Joe also needs treatment when the pellets become infected regularly. He said: “I have still them all in me. I have just got to live with them.”
The injuries meant Joe could not return to his offshore job.
But he has now found work as a safety supervisor teaching young people.
“All my teenage years I had my head down grafting, but I lost my job after this,” he said.
“I had to do something else. It’s taken more than 10 years, but eventually after 20 or 30 operations I’m back on my feet.
“I am fighting it everyday because I have got two kids. I’ll fight this for as long as I can.” A spokeswoman for Durham Constabulary said: “There is currently no active investigation into this case.
“However, we will always consider any new information which is brought to our attention.”
IT was 1956 and our display image shows Newcastle’s main shopping thoroughfare, Northumberland Street, in full swing.
The queues and scarcities of postwar austerity had largely vanished and the country was well on the mend.
Full employment meant there were plenty of job opportunities, people had more money in their pockets than ever before, and they could spend their hard-earned cash at shops which now bulged with goods.
Our photographs from the Sunday Sun archive give a taste of life in our region 65 years ago.
In Whitley Bay, day trippers and holiday-makers flocked to the Spanish City. In Jarrow, the emerging shopping centre pointed towards a new booming future for retail. And at Walker in Newcastle, at South Medomsley near Consett, and at North Shields, traditional industry in the shape of shipbuilding, coal mining and ship repair was still going strong (for the time being anyway).
For the young folk of the region, as well as being able to walk into a job as soon as they left school, a new wildly exciting form of music arrived fresh from the United States.
Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Bill Haley were the rising stars of rock’n’roll, but none would burn as brightly as a 21-year-old from Tupelo, Mississippi called Elvis Presley who enjoyed his first hit single Heartbreak Hotel in 1956.
Meanwhile, at a time when television was still its infancy and there was only one channel in the North East, most towns had at least one cinema – often more.
Popular films this year included The Ten Commandments, The King And I, High Society, Around The World in 80 Days and Giant.
In the wider world, American heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano retired undefeated; the Eurovision Song Contest took place for the first time; and the Olympic Games were contested in Melbourne, Australia.
But the world was changing in the aftermath of the war.
In October 1956, Soviet troops brutally crushed an uprising in Hungary; the United States carried out ongoing hydrogen bomb tests at Bikini Atoll; and when Britain was forced to humiliatingly pull its troops out of Egypt during the Suez Crisis, it was clear the country’s place in the international order was diminished.
• Don’t forget to visit our Memory Lane local history website at memorylane.co.uk
■ The launch of the City of Auckland from the Walker Naval Yard in 1956
HE wasn’t bitten by a spider, pounded by gamma radiation or born with the power of a Viking god.
Steve Rogers was just a skinny kid from Brooklyn with no super-power whatsoever until he was injected with a secret serum that led to him becoming Captain America.
He made his first appearance in 1941, in Timely Comics, which later became Marvel Comics, and the patriotic super-soldier was the creation of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon.
Joe, who passed away in 2011 at the age of 98, once explained: “I was 24 when I started creating Captain America. It’s been a guardian angel hanging over my whole life.
“Everywhere I went, in the service or wherever, I wasn’t Joe Simon. I was Captain America.”
Co-creator Jack, who also brought to life comic favourites like the Incredible Hulk, Thor, Fantastic Four, Black Panther and the X-men, was 22 when he introduced Steve Rogers to the public for the first time. He explained the appeal of the character, saying: “I don’t think Captain America would do anything wrong. He wouldn’t... even at the cost of his life.”
Captain America proved a hit with fans from the very start, with the first March issue selling nearly a million copies. The front cover of the launch issue saw him punching Hitler in the face and standing up for all-american virtues. The comic has since become a highly-prized collectors item and a few years ago was fetching £278,142.
Stan Lee began working on the comic from the third issue, with a story called Captain America Foils The Traitor’s Revenge, which saw Captain America throwing his shield and using it as a weapon for the first time.
You can’t keep a good superhero down, and Stan Lee and Jack revived the character once more in 1964. “I found a way to help the war effort by portraying the times in the form of comic characters,” said Jack. “I was saying what was on my mind. I was extremely patriotic.”
It was not long before Captain America made the move to TV and cinema. Dick Purcell played him in the 1944 cinema serial, which changed the comic book story, so that a city district attorney by the name of Grant Gardner put on the star-spangled costume to tackle a villain called the Scarab.
Marvel Comics gave Republic Pictures the rights for free in the hope that it would boost sales of the comic. The cliffhanger movie episodes featured titles like The Purple Death, Scarlet Shroud and The Avenging Corpse before
Captain America finally triumphed in Toll Of Doom. The city commissioner ended up saying: “Thanks to Captain America, who we now know to be our fighting district attorney, the Scarab and his murderous gang will pay the supreme penalty in the electric chair at the stroke of midnight.”
A TV movie followed in 1979, with Reb Brown in the title role. He would go on to star in Captain America II: Death Too Soon the same year.
His version of Steve Rogers rode on a gadget-packed motorcycle and so he
wore a helmet instead of the traditional mask, and sometimes he used his shield as a windshield while driving.
Matt Salinger took on the mantle next, in 1990.
The movie saw Captain America freed from the ice after decades, to tackle arch villain the Red Skull and stop him kidnapping the US president. “I want to get back into the fight, sir, “he says.
Matt beat Dolph Lundgren and Arnold Schwarzenegger to the role and filming took place in Yugoslavia.
Chris Evans has appeared as Captain America in 11 films, but turned down the role three times because of worries about the impact it would have on his private life. Robert Downey Jr, who plays Iron Man, eventually convinced him to take the part and much of the filming took place in Britain.
Chris, who also played
comic book character the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies, said: “Even if it wasn’t a comic book, I think the story of Steve Rogers is great. He’s a great guy. He’s a great character to play. He just happens to be a comic book character.”
The comic book that appears in the movie also harks back to the birth of Captain America and features a modified version of the original front cover from 1941. Stan Lee also made one of his famous cameo appearance in the 2011 film, as a general, and the officer sitting next to him was none other than actor Reb Brown from the 1979 films.
Screenwriter David Self who wrote a draft of Captain America: The First Avenger admitted the character had been his favourite superhero as a child. He said: “My Dad told me I could one day be Captain America.”
I found a way to help the war effort in the form of comic characters Co-creator
Jack Kirby
Edelweiss singer Vince Hill was in Tonight’s The Night at the Talk of the Town Theatre when his wife Annie was expecting their first child. He kept in touch between rehearsals by calling on the stage door telephone.
There were plenty of long distance phone calls when American performer Liza Minnelli was working in London and living in a flat in Chelsea. She made her film debut that year in Charlie Bubbles with Albert Finney.