Background
Durant was born as Donald Allison Durae in Long Beach, California. His father was killed in a truck accident near Bakersfield two months before Durant's birth; his mother remarried three times before she died of lung cancer at the age of only forty-six in 1959. Durant himself was seriously injured a few weeks before his eleventh birthday, when his bicycle chain broke, and he careened into the path of a cement truck. He lay in a coma for three days, his right arm fractured, his right femur and hip so badly damaged that doctors nearly amputated the leg before his family scraped up enough money for a specialist. Young Durant was bedridden for more than a year.
One of Durant's stepfathers owned a cattle ranch near Elko in northeastern Nevada. Durant spent a summer there and learned to shoot and ride before he returned to California. In junior high school, he was a deejay for a local radio station. In high school, he played on the football team, having worn special plates because of his previous injuries. He enlisted in the United States Navy. At one point, he served in the United States Army as well because of a mixup in paperwork. Toward the end of his commitment, he entertained veterans at Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco.
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