Obituaries--Jack LaLanne

Another television icon of note has died: Fitness guru Jack LaLanne, 96, of respiratory failure as a result of pneumonia.

I watched his program in the early 1960s, although I was a small child and certainly not interested in "fitness" in any manner, shape, or form. However, LaLanne was way ahead of his time.

He performed his first feat in 1954, when he was 40 and wanted to prove he wasn't "over the hill." He swam the length of the Golden Gate Bridge — underwater. (He carried two air tanks.)

Other feats in his 40s: swimming from Alcatraz to San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf wearing handcuffs; swimming the Golden Gate Channel while towing a 2,500-pound cabin cruiser; pulling a paddleboard 30 miles from the Farallon Islands to the San Francisco shore.

At age 60, he upped the ante by swimming from Alcatraz to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, handcuffed and shackled and towing a 1,000-pound boat.

The next year, he did a similar feat underwater. And at age 70, he towed 70 boats with 70 people from the Queen's Way Bridge in Long Beach Harbor to the Queen Mary — while handcuffed and shackled.

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