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Outside Magazine, June 2004
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Crazy Mofos
Without a Barrel (cont.)

ROUGHLY 5,000 PEOPLE have died by accident or suicide at Niagara Falls since 1854. Of those, five were attempting stunt descents, riding over the falls in wooden or steel barrels, inner-tube craft, and, in one 1990 case, a kayak. Kirk Jones joins a list of only ten to pull off a stunt and live.

Officially, Jones is the first to survive the falls without the aid of a boat, barrel, or safety device, but some Niagara buffs argue that the title is rightfully owned by Roger Woodward, who survived an accidental trip over the falls 44 years ago, when he was seven, wearing only his clothes and a life jacket. "In my mind, Roger is the first to go over unprotected," Paul Gromosiak says. "That life preserver by itself wasn't enough to save him."

Woodward's story provides a particularly haunting contrast with that of Kirk Jones, for as much as Jones hoped to capitalize on celebrity, Woodward has tried to avoid it. Today, Woodward is a 51-year-old telecommunications executive living a quiet life outside Huntsville, Alabama. But everything got crazy again when Jones's leap put him back on the radar. Within hours, reporters tracked Woodward down and pressed him to talk about his once famous Niagara Falls experience.

It happened on July 9, 1960. Roger and his sister, Deanne, 17, were taking a boat ride on the Upper Niagara River with a 40-year-old family friend named Jim Honeycutt. About an hour into the trip, the boat's engine hit a rock and lost power; the craft was battered by waves and soon capsized. Somehow Deanne swam near shore and was rescued, but Roger and Jim torpedoed over the falls. Jim drowned; his body was found a few days later. Roger was rescued immediately—shivering, with a concussion and a few scratches.

The media response was frenzied. The New York Times published a front-page article with a diagram of Roger's route. Life magazine ran a six-page story titled "Miracle at Niagara." And reporters besieged the Woodwards' Niagara Falls home, a small pink-and-white trailer in a residential park called Sunny Acres Mobile Estates.

Roger's parents refused interview requests politely, then firmly, until they couldn't take it anymore. Late one night in the summer of 1961, they piled into the car and fled 300 miles to Coxsackie, New York, giving the kids stern instructions on the way: To ensure a "normal life" for themselves, the children shouldn't tell anyone where they came from or what happened. Roger and Deanne obeyed—they didn't discuss the accident, even between themselves, for the next 34 years.

Drastic though it was, the Woodwards' plan worked. Roger enjoyed an anonymous, normal boyhood and married his high school sweetheart. He often wondered why he had been the one to survive, while Honeycutt perished, and his questions led him to briefly pursue a career in the Baptist ministry, in the early eighties. He's returned to the falls several times, once with Deanne, but he remains stubborn about keeping a low profile.

"I don't really like all this attention, because I didn't do anything," Woodward told me. "My sister and I were part of a tragic accident, and luckily we survived. But we conquered nothing; we sought to achieve nothing. We just happened to be there."

When I asked how he felt about Jones, Woodward fell silent. "I don't know what his motives were," he said finally. "If he wanted to take his life, then I'm thankful he is alive. I hope he finds the help he needs. But if he's just trying to beat the system and get rich or famous, he's missing something very important."


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