Bobby Knievel lived directly across the street from our family home in Butte, raised by his grandparents, Ignatious J. Knievel and Grandma Emma, at 2511 Parrott St. My father's name was Ivers J. Killoy, and we lived at 2511 Washoe St.

Being 10 years younger than Bobby and the youngest in our family, I was always the delivery boy shuttling mail that had been delivered to the wrong house. It seemed I was always handing Grandma Emma their mail, and she would give me a bundle that belonged to the Killoy tribe.

Saturday night bath in the Killoy household always ended with my little Irish mother looking at me - straight from the tub, scrubbed clean, hair combed and fresh, clean jams - and asking, "Now, who are you, little boy? I don't recognize you."

To which I would respond, "Ma, it's me, Danny."

"No, you're way too clean and neat to be Danny; you must be Bobby Knievel. Now run along home, for your grandma is worried about you."

I would then plop on her lap and give her a kiss, which would get the proper reply: "A saints preserve us, it is Danny - you had me fooled."

All of Bobby's life, he was the most immaculately clean and neat person I ever met.

Evel and my mother had a lifelong connection. Where there was a Knievel story, my mother was somewhere in the vicinity.

When my brother Jim and I were around 5 and 6, and Bobby was about 16, he had Jim and I up against the old wooden fence by our house, hazing us with his horse. We're screaming and crying in fear for our lives, when out of the house came that wild Irish redhead, all 4'11," 100 lbs. (she always claimed 5'1" - not a chance).

She reached up and jerked Knievel out of the saddle and proceeded to, as she would recall on her death bed, "beat the beJasus, out of him."

This story was recalled at many family gatherings. Evel also told this story on the Johnny Carson show one night, while he was explaining how tough a town Butte was. Knievel's comment was, "My hometown was so tough, the little old lady across the street beat me up one day."

Ma's comment was, "If he calls me an old lady again, I give him another dose worse than the first one."

During Evel's heyday, he was a fixture in the July 4 parade, with his bikes, semis, Lear jets, etc. The 4th being my mother's birthday, Bob would make sure to find her on the parade route, and Ma would climb up on the back of the motorcycle and Knievel would roar down the street with Ma's white mane blowing in the wind and her screaming and laughing like a little kid.

My mother was known to all in Butte as the cake lady, making birthday cakes, wedding cakes and all kinds. On one of Knievel's birthdays, Ma made a cake for Bob, and as usual I was the delivery boy. Across the street I head, cake in a beer box. As luck would have it, I stumble, and box, cake and I hit the ground at the same time.

Not to worry: five minutes later the cake is back in the box, sand and all, and I ring the door bell, set the cake on the step, and off I run. Fortunately for yours truly, Grandma Emma, being the kindhearted soul she was, never told the cake lady until many years later.

The Knievel family has always been a big part of the Killoy family life. It was never more apparent than when Mom was dying and the family was all gathered around her bed for the last few days. The phone in her hospital room rang, and it was Bobby calling from Florida to wish her well.

This was January of 1999, and Knievel was scheduled to have his liver transplant that afternoon. He took time to call, and it said a lot about who he was as a person.

After Ma passed and Bob called to offer his condolences, I teased him, telling him that I knew what his real motive was. I was sure that as he prepared for a life-threatening surgery with the liver transplant, reality for him was that he was faced with the possibility of meeting his maker.

I knew how his mind worked, and he figured if he got to the pearly gates at the same time as Marg Killoy, he wanted to be able to say, "I'm with her."

I will always remember his reply to my observation. "Hey! that's not a bad idea. I know the kind of life I've led and what kind of life your mother led, and if I was going to hitch my wagon to anybody, it would surely be her."

I was there during a number of Evel's jumps, and they all had a certain kind of bittersweet emotion to them. Especially the Snake River Canyon jump. The first reports after the failure of the jump were that he had landed in the river, and we all knew that was certain death.

That day, as I looked out over the thousands of attendees milling around at a carnival-like atmosphere, I was overcome with sadness. Here I was watching a friend commit suicide, just to fulfill a brash statement, always extending the limits of his ability to defy death.

As I look back on my relationship with Bob, there was always sadness lurking right on the edge of whatever he accomplished; the fame, the money, the world acclaim, never seemed to make him what I saw as truly happy. It was only in the last couple of years, as he faced his death from a disease that daily turned his lungs into scar tissue, that I really saw an acceptance of who he was, away from all the trappings that made him "Evel Knievel," back to Bobby Knievel, Butte, Montana native and damn proud of it.