Remembering Chuck Norris
Chuck Norris passed away recently (03/19/2026). As a friend put it, he was a symbol of our youth.
When my dad was a kid, he had western heroes like Roy Rogers, Gene Autrey, William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy), and Richard Boone (Paladin from Have Gun - Will Travel)
I grew up in the seventies and eighties, so I had action movie heroes. My favorites were Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Chuck Norris, but it was Chuck who set the action standard.
In 1978, Good Guys Wear Black came out in theaters. My dad took my brother and me to see the movie. I was nine then and didn’t know anything about Chuck Norris. I don’t think my dad knew much about him beyond what a movie trailer would’ve shown.
I remember being enthralled with that movie, especially the moment when Chuck jumped into the air, over the hood of a car, and kicked through its windshield. Chuck was a comic book superhero without a cape and tights.
My dad made my brother and me take some pictures while in our gis. You can see how motivated I was to be involved in the photography session.
My dad took my brother and me to a series of Chuck’s movies after that. A Force of One (1979), The Octagon (1980), Eye for an Eye (1981), Silent Rage (1982) Forced Vengeance (1982) and Lone Wolf McQuade (1983). I loved them all. He was the toughest, coolest guy on the screen. The fact my dad took me to those movies made them even better.
Chuck’s early movies were violent, but they weren’t overly graphic like the movies of today. There was also limited swearing and almost no on-screen sex. That meant they were safe for my dad to take my brother and me.*
I started Kenpo Karate in 1982 because I wanted to be like Chuck. I didn’t realize he was a black belt in Tang So Do but the difference in martial arts styles didn’t matter.
As I got older, my dad stopped taking me to Chuck’s movies. Some of that had to do with me becoming a teenager. Some of it might’ve just been dad growing older. Some of it might’ve been that Chuck moved away from martial-art-centric movies to shoot-em-up action flicks. Whatever it was didn’t stop my love of Chuck’s movies.
My favorite from the late eighties, was Code of Silence, which came out in 1985. Chuck played Eddie Cusack who tries to stop a gang war while being ostracized by his department for standing up for what was right. I thought the movie was amazing and have watched it probably more than twenty times by now.
When Code of Silence first came out, even Siskel & Ebert (At the Movies) gave the movie two thumbs up. Since I was a huge film nerd in high school (and remain one), I was a fan of At the Movies, so I was as surprised as the hosts when they approved of Code of Silence. They’d been hard on a lot of Chuck’s earlier pictures.
I quit karate when high school started, a spoiled reaction to my parents moving to another part of town. Later, I softened my attitude and started training at a different Kenpo school, nearer my house. I quit again when I joined the Army and moved away.
After my stint in the military, I came home and started college, a career, and later a family. I watched a few of Chuck’s early nineties movies and the first season of his TV series, Walker, Texas Ranger, but stopped following his career by the time the 20th century was wrapping up.
That didn’t have as much to do with Chuck as it had to do with me. I was no longer a kid and had adult responsibilities. Probably like my dad did when he stopped watching Chuck’s movies with me.
I started karate in the later nineties but did it because I felt as if I left something unaccomplished when I went it the service. I might’ve started in the martial arts many years earlier so I could be like Chuck, but I returned to fulfill a promise a junior high kid made to himself.
Over the years, I’ve rewatched many of Chuck’s early movies, especially Code of Silence, Forced Vengeance, and The Octagon (easily my three favorites of all his movies). I even watched one after hearing the news of Chuck’s passing. I’m sure you can guess which one.
I never met Chuck Norris. The closest I ever came to meeting him was taking a picture with his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Yet he had an huge influence on my life. I’m sure he did for a lot of boys in the seventies and eighties.
*I termed my dad’s thoughts on movies the Chuck Norris rule—swearing and sex were bad but violence is okay. It’s the rule I’ve applied to my Cozy Up Series. If you want to read a blog post I wrote on that rule, you can find it here: Chuck Norris and the Art of Writing Brozies.