When Emma Knievel looks back on 100 years of living, life with a young boy who liked bicycle jumps and went on to become a motorcycle daredevil figures prominently in her memories.
Knievel is the grandmother of stunt artist and Butte legend Evel Knievel. She and husband Ig raised Evel, who began life as Robert, from the time he was 17 months old. He's now 55."He was more than a handful," said Emma Knievel, who turns 100 on Sunday. "He was two or three bushels full."
She remembers that when he was boy, he jumped his bicycle over whatever was handy.
"We tried to break him of it," she said, but Evel prevailed.
"I think that if he wasn't so crippled up with all those hurts he's had, he'd still be jumping," Emma Knievel said in an interview at Crest Nursing Home.
Evel gained fame by jumping motorcycles over cars, trucks and other objects. In 1974, he tried to jump southern Idaho's Snake River Canyon on a jet-powered "sky cycle" but couldn't complete the leap. In the 1980s, federal tax problems brought him more notoriety.
Although Emma Knievel believes Evel is a fine daredevil and exceptional motorcyclist, she said she doesn't think he's the best of the lot.
"I don't think he could outjump Robbie," she said, referring to Evel's son who also performs cycle stunts.
Emma Knievel is fond of Evel but is quick to say her entire family shares equal standing. She has seven other grandchildren, and 32 great- and great-great-grandchildren.
Ig and Emma Knievel moved to Butte in 1915, after working a farm in Iowa and running a business in South Dakota. Ig built a house, and in the winter of 1916, the couple moved in and began raising sons Bob and Don.
Some dates have turned fuzzy for Emma Knievel, but she fondly recalls being an early female daredevil in the community.
"I was one of the first women automobile drivers in Butte," she said.