Deafness didn’t define her, but defying death did
When she was 5 months old, a simultaneous diagnosis of the mumps, measles and smallpox left Kitty O’Neil with a scorching fever that caused her to lose her hearing and nearly killed her. Her mother, a Cherokee homemaker who may have saved her life by immersing Kitty in an ice bath, resisted teaching her sign language and instead showed her how to read lips and form words of her own, placing Kitty’s hands on her throat so she could feel the vibrations of her vocal cords.
In the years that followed, Kitty learned the piano and cello, feeling the music through her hands and feet, and trained as a platform diver, winning dozens of competitions. Her coach, Sammy Lee, assured reporters she was a shoo-in for the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo. But in the lead-up to the Olympic trials, she broke her wrist and came down with a case of spinal meningitis.
Doctors told her she might never walk again. But within two weeks she was up out of bed. “I got sick, so I had to start all over again, and I got bored,” she later told the Midco Sports Network. “I wanted to do something fast. Speed. Motorcycle. Water skiing. Boat. Anything.”
So O’Neil, who was 72 when she died Nov. 2 of pneumonia in Eureka, South Dakota, set about becoming a stunt artist and record-setting daredevil. Amid a battle with cancer that required two sets of operations in her 20s, she raced motorcycles and speed boats, dove off hotel rooftops, leaped from helicopters, set herself on fire, water skied at more than 100 m.p.h. and earned the title “world’s fastest woman,” reaching speeds of about 600 m.p.h. while piloting a rocket car across a dried lake bed in southeastern Oregon.
She stood in for actresses including Lindsay Wagner of The Bionic Woman, dangled out of a sixth-story window for an episode of Baretta, braved rising waters on a sinking jet plane in the movie thriller Airport ’77, was immolated during a graveyard séance in September 30, 1955, and rolled, crashed or raced cars for films such as The Blues Brothers.
For one memorable 1979 stunt in the Wonder Woman television series, she leaped off the roof of a Hilton hotel in Los Angeles, arms spread wide, and fell 127 feet before landing on an inflated airbag, setting a new women’s high-fall record. “If I hadn’t hit the centre of the bag, I probably would have been killed,” she told the Washington Post.
O’Neil improved that record by jumping from a helicopter onto an airbag 180 feet below. The bag measured 60 feet by 80 feet, she said, “But from up there, it looked about the size of a postage stamp.”
“She was a wonder woman, a true wonder woman,” said her friend Ky Michaelson, a fellow stunt performer who designed several of the vehicles O’Neil used to break records in the 1970s, when she alternated between stunt jobs and efforts to drive a car faster than the speed of sound.
Her small stature — 5-feet-2 and 97 pounds during her heyday — helped her withstand strong G-forces, Michaelson said.
O’Neil credited her hearing impairment with helping her maintain focus, and spoke and read lips well enough that some directors were unaware she was deaf, according to one Associated Press account. “I know I’m deaf. But I’m still normal,” she told the Washington Post. “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.”
In1977, she set a women’s water-speed record of 275 m.p.h.. But perhaps her greatest stunt or daredevil achievement occurred on Dec. 6, 1976, when she set the women’s land-speed record while driving the SMI Motivator, effectively a rocket on three wheels.
Speeding across the Alvord Desert in Oregon, she notched an average speed of 512.71 m.p.h. during two runs — obliterating the previous record of 321miles per hour, set by Lee Breedlove in 1965.
Her exploits inspired a Mattel action figure and a 1979 TV movie, Silent Victory: The Kitty O’Neil Story, starring Stockard Channing. By 1982, she had left the industry. O’Neil’s women’s land-speed record has been challenged by driver Jessi Combs. “I’m proud of her. I’m happy for her,” O’Neil told MidCo Sports in 2015. Still, she added, “If she breaks the record, then I’ll do it again. It’s a challenge.”