Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. It's too bad he's never cried. Hilarious, right? But Norris is just as human as the next person — and his struggles are just as real.
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00:00Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer, it's too bad he's never cried.
00:04Hilarious, right?
00:06But Norris is just as human as the next person, and his struggles are just as real.
00:11Just a few months after Chuck Norris's younger brother Wieland was born, their father was
00:14drafted into World War II.
00:16In his memoir, Against All Odds, My Story, Norris recounted his family getting one of
00:20the worst messages imaginable.
00:23Ray Norris was MIA.
00:24When he ultimately returned to the family, his time in the war weighed heavily on him,
00:28and his alcohol addiction grew worse.
00:31Norris recalled some harrowing incidents, writing about his father threatening his mother
00:35trying to get her to give him the $5 she'd put aside for food.
00:38Norris wrote,
00:39When he was drunk, little things often sent him into a rage.
00:42If he heard the water running while he was suffering from a hangover, he would explode
00:46in abusive tirade, roaring threats and expletives.
00:50While Mom tried to calm him down, Wieland and I hid in the bedroom.
00:53Norris wrote about his eternal hope that one day the drinking would stop, but he also wrote
00:57about realizing that wasn't going to happen, and it took years, but the worst did happen.
01:02Not long after the birth of Norris' youngest brother, Aaron, their father was driving drunk
01:06when he hit and killed a woman.
01:08Convicted and sentenced to a work camp, they visited him regularly.
01:12Norris recalled being hopeful that it would encourage his father to stay sober, but that
01:15hope was short-lived.
01:17After he was released, Norris stated that Ray went right for the bar, writing,
01:21Dad was becoming increasingly aggressive at home and abusive toward Mom.
01:24Luckily, he was too drunk to take my threat too seriously.
01:28That, he said, was when the family realized they had no choice but to leave for good.
01:31He always was like the man in the house because his father wasn't there.
01:37Chuck Norris is famously patriotic.
01:39He's so patriotic, in fact, that he wrote Black Belt Patriotism, How to Reawaken America,
01:44as a sort of blueprint of how to fix all that he saw wrong with the country.
01:48He hasn't always had such an unconditionally devoted attitude toward the country, though,
01:52And when he appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in 1993, he shared the heartbreaking story
01:56of how his brother Wieland was killed during the Vietnam War.
01:59He had been acting as the point man on a patrol when he realized they were walking into a
02:02Viet Cong ambush and he tried to warn the rest of his unit.
02:06He was shot and killed.
02:08Norris went on to say that they'd found out what happened from one of the other soldiers
02:11who had been there.
02:12He attended Wieland's funeral and made sure that his family knew that he had given his
02:15life to warn his fellow soldiers of immediate danger.
02:18The conflict cost over three million lives.
02:22When Cavett asked if the loss was made worse by the loss of the war, Norris explained that
02:25when the US first got involved, he was 100 percent behind it, saying,
02:29I'm one of these ultra-patriotic type guys.
02:32But reflecting back, realizing what kind of a war it was, it was a war of monetary gains
02:37rather than a war of principle.
02:39I think it was a war that could not be won, and we have to be careful about that in the future.
02:43Chuck Norris's first marriage ended in divorce, and he stated in his memoir that he was absolutely
02:48devastated, writing,
02:49Divorce was a shock to my system.
02:52Besides the emotional issues of dealing with a sense of failure, I was suddenly thrown
02:55into a whole new lifestyle.
02:57All my life I had been accustomed to being taken care of and nurtured by strong, wonderful
03:01women.
03:02His entire life changed when he got a letter in the mail from Diana DiCioli, and she was
03:06writing to tell him that she was his daughter.
03:08Her mother, Joanna, had a short-term fling with the then-married Norris when he was in
03:12the military, and Norris stresses that he never actually told her that he was married.
03:16She later discouraged her daughter from reaching out to him, saying it would ruin his marriage,
03:21but with the news of his divorce, she reached out.
03:23Norris said that he knew he was her father as soon as he saw her, and that he struggled
03:27with what he'd done.
03:28His faith had taught that extramarital affairs were a definite sin, and not only did he feel
03:32the weight of the sin, but also guilt over not being there for his daughter and her mother.
03:37By 2017, Chuck Norris's fans were beginning to notice that he had sort of stepped away
03:41from the limelight, and according to a statement he gave to the Washington Post, there was
03:45a heartbreaking reason for his absence.
03:47He stated that over the past several years, he had been focused on his wife Gina's health.
03:52Gina O'Kelly had undergone an MRI scan as a test for the possibility she would develop
03:56rheumatoid arthritis, and after the test, she experienced a laundry list of symptoms
04:00that included tremors, numbness, and difficulties putting thoughts and words together.
04:07In an interview with CBS, the couple said Gina had to be taken to the emergency room
04:11multiple times.
04:13She spent months in the hospital and accumulated bills to the tune of $2 million.
04:17That included treatments to repair her central nervous system and trips to China for stem
04:21cell therapies.
04:23Norris spoke about the fear he felt.
04:30He continued that it wasn't just about her, and that it was about the others who had been
04:34diagnosed with illnesses connected with gadolinium deposition disease.
04:42They initially filed a $10 million lawsuit against the company's manufacturing the dye
04:46that Norris blamed for her illness, but the lawsuit was voluntarily withdrawn and no
04:50settlement was arranged.
04:52If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National
04:56Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
05:01You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.