Later Years
The lawnchair used in the flight was given to an admiring boy named Jerry, though Walters later regretted doing so, since the Smithsonian Institute asked him to donate it to its museum. Twenty years later, Jerry, by then an adult, sent an e-mail to Mark Barry, a pilot who had documented Walters' story and dedicated a Web site to it, and identified himself. The chair was still sitting in his garage, attached to some of the original tethers and water jugs used as ballast.
After his flight, he was in brief demand as a motivational speaker and he quit his job as a truck driver. He was featured in a Timex print ad in the early '90s, but he never made much money from his fame. Later in his life, Walters hiked the San Gabriel Mountains and did volunteer work for the United States Forest Service. He later broke up with his girlfriend of 15 years and could only find work sporadically as a security guard.
He committed suicide in 1993 at the age of 44 by shooting himself in the heart in Angeles National Forest.
Read more about this topic: Larry Walters
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“Almost everybody in the neighborhood had “troubles,” frankly localized and specified; but only the chosen had “complications.” To have them was in itself a distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death warrant. People struggled on for years with “troubles,” but they almost always succumbed to “complications.””
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937)
“My dear Kafka,
When you’ve had five years of it, not five months,
Five years of an irresistible force meeting an immoveable object right in your belly,
Then you’ll know about depression.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)