Steve McQueen

by Greg Laurie

  There could not have been a better person to embrace Steve than Sammy, and eventually Steve and Barbi ended up alongside Sammy and his wife, Wanda, in the balcony of the Ventura Missionary Church for Sunday services.

  Santa Paula and Steve’s new down-to-earth neighbors had finally provided him with the home, the no-strings-attached camaraderie, and the emotional security for which he’d yearned so long. Now it was up to him. Would he accept God’s call? Or would he continue his aimless search?

  HELLO, PREACHER MAN!

  _____

  Returning from Santa Paula, the mood in the car is more mellow than melancholy. Seeing the hangar again and talking to Pete Mason seems to have been actually cathartic for Barbi and put her in an expansive mood. So I plunge right in and ask how Steve told her he wanted them to start attending services at Ventura Missionary Church.

  “One day he walked into the hangar and out of the blue said, ‘We’re going to church on Sunday,’ and that was it,” she says. “He never explained why he wanted to go, never explained why he wanted me to go with him. I just figured it was the wifely thing to do. So I did.” She put on one of those “dowdy” (Barbi’s word) knee-length dresses he’d recently bought for her, and she went.

  A few faithful people who wanted to serve God started the Ventura Missionary Church in July 1960 in a dance studio. Three years later they had a proper church erected on the corner of Telegraph and Day Roads and in 1971, called Reverend Leonard DeWitt to be senior pastor of the seventy-five-member congregation. Under his leadership Ventura Missionary Church had such a massive growth spurt that a bigger facility was built in 1975.

  Once Steve made the decision to attend services there, Barbi says, it was important to him that his presence not be a distraction to other worshippers. “He thought the focus should be on the Lord and not Steve McQueen,” she says.

  “One day he walked into the hangar and out of the blue said, ‘We’re going to church on Sunday,’ and that was it,” she says. “He never explained why he wanted to go, never explained why he wanted me to go with him. I just figured it was the wifely thing to do. So I did.”

  But of course, unless he intended to wear a bag over his head, people would recognize the movie star in their midst. (At this point he’d cut his hair short again for The Hunter.) He didn’t, and they did, but it never became a problem, Barbi explains. “Several members recognized him, but he wasn’t perturbed or upset, happily shaking hands with many of them. He said later on that the people seemed genuine and that he felt very comfortable in that setting.”

  The McQueens sat in the balcony of the church with Sammy and Wanda Mason almost every Sunday, and over time their little group expanded as Steve brought along his son Chad whenever he visited, as well as friends from the airport and anyone else he could convince to come with him. Church became part of the weekly routine, and Steve McQueen began to change before peoples’ eyes.

  The change came with at least one unintended consequence, as related by Steve’s ranch foreman, Grady Ragsdale, in his 1983 book Steve McQueen: The Final Chapter: “Steve liked to roll his old desk chair out in front of the hangar doors and, leaning back with beer in hand, watch the planes take off and land. He had finished one can and was starting another when he remarked, ‘This beer tastes awful.’ He made a face, then added jokingly, ‘They told me if I started going to church I’d lose my taste for it. I guess they were right.’”

  The McQueens sat in the balcony of the church with Sammy and Wanda Mason almost every Sunday . . . Church became part of the weekly routine, and Steve McQueen began to change before peoples’ eyes.

  The McQueens had attended services for about three months, Barbi says, when Steve finally introduced himself to Pastor DeWitt. McQueen invited him out to lunch, just the two of them. He never told Barbi what happened, but she says upon Steve’s return home, it was immediately apparent his session with DeWitt had had a profound effect on her husband. “He was a little more quiet and reserved than usual,” she says. “He seemed different.”

  My mind is racing with all manner of possibilities. Did Steve open himself up and profess his faith to Pastor DeWitt at that lunch? Or did they just talk about matters of faith in general? Did Steve test DeWitt like he did everyone else he’d talk to about God? What was their relationship like? I desperately wanted to know.

  But all of a sudden Barbi seems a little different herself, pensive and more guarded. So instead of pressing her about that mysterious lunch, I simply ask if Leonard DeWitt is still alive. She says she hasn’t seen him since he officiated at a private memorial service for Steve two days after he passed away in November 1980. If he’s still around, Barbi guesses he’d be about eighty years old. Unless retired ministers go into the Witness Protection Program, she adds, perking back up, it probably wouldn’t be too hard to track him down.

  McQueen invited him out to lunch, just the two of them. He never told Barbi what happened, but she says upon Steve’s return home, it was immediately apparent his session with deWitt had had a profound effect on her husband.

  Barbi is going back to Idaho in the morning, scheduled to catch an early morning Town Car to the airport. At the hotel door we say our good-byes to this warm, engaging, generous free spirit who’s become very special in our lives. Cathe and Barbi hug like lifelong friends, and when it’s my turn, I thank her for everything and wish her Godspeed.

  As she’s about to enter the hotel, Barbi stops, turns around with a big smile on her face, and calls out, “Tell Leonard DeWitt I said hello, Preacher Man!”

  Then she’s gone.

  _____

  There is no question that God arranged for my path to cross with Barbi McQueen and so many others. It all started with my fixation on finding a Bullitt car then intensified when I saw a documentary about McQueen and tried to put my finger on something I’d heard somewhere about him becoming a Christian. The people I’ve met since then are not actors repeating lines. They are friends and family who knew Steve better than anyone. And as this story unfolds before my eyes, I wonder why it’s never been told publicly. Whenever I share a brief version of it, people are amazed by it.

  I think back to that offhand talk with Mel Gibson in the green room before I interviewed him on stage at one of our recent SoCal Harvest events about his new film Hacksaw Ridge. I’m privileged to have gotten to know Mel a bit and find out firsthand what an amazing guy he is. Among other things, he possesses a great sense of humor.

  Mel never met Steve McQueen but is a big fan.

  “He [McQueen] developed a new kind of hero that wasn’t your typical two-dimensional hero,” Mel said. “He was kind of antiheroic. He was the bad boy you could dig.

  “And he understood the camera. He understood the level of which he had to operate in front of the camera. He understood what sort of intensity he needed to bring at what minute. Sometimes it wasn’t much. It was hardly on the Richter scale. It was effortless. It was small. It was subtle. He could switch it on. This is what you need to be an actor.

  “He [McQueen] developed a new kind of hero that wasn’t your typical two-dimensional hero,” Mel said. “He was kind of antiheroic. He was the bad boy you could dig.”

  “He was so cool, man. What was his legacy? Well, there has never been another one. He is singular. He was very good. He was the best at what he did. He was the best Steve McQueen there was. Nobody else could do that.”

  Mel actually reminds me of Steve, starting with their blue eyes. When Mel hit the big time with The Road Warrior, a New York Times film critic compared him to McQueen.

  In the course of our chat that night, I told Mel about Steve’s conversion to Christianity. And like so many others, he said he’d heard it happened after McQueen found out he had cancer. He was stunned when I said Steve came to Jesus before his cancer diagnosis. It happened when he was at the very top of his game, and it was his faith that enabled him to face the horrible news.

  Mel Gibson is also a man of faith. He directed the wildly successful
and powerful movie about the last hours of Jesus called The Passion of the Christ. He knows like few others what it’s like to breathe the rarified air of international superstardom.

  “Many people have very hard lives. You have to look at that and say, ‘Where is the justice in that?,’” Mel said. “For me there has to be a place where that evens out somehow. It is about the journey we make here. I think ultimately it is about our eternal life. That is my belief. That is what really keeps you going. Otherwise, let’s all just step off of the building like lemmings because this is a drag sometimes. If you look at the big picture, it is not a drag. It is an adventure.”

  I asked Mel if he would consider endorsing this book, and he agreed without blinking an eye. For that I am very grateful.

  I am equally grateful to have met and befriended Barbi McQueen.

  SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME

  _____

  I was prepared to go full-on Sam Spade in my search for Pastor DeWitt and so was almost disappointed when all it took was a single phone call to Ventura Missionary Church.

  He was no longer pastor there, I learned, but was serving at Ventura Baptist Church just a few miles away as head of the “Jubilee Ministry” for senior members of the congregation. The classes for adult singles and couples provide Bible study, more traditional music, and a variety of activities for worship and fellowship, including monthly luncheons and dinners, guest speakers and singers, and special excursions.

  I got the number for Ventura Baptist Church and had my secretary Carol call. Turns out that Pastor DeWitt and I had actually met several years earlier at one of our Harvest Crusades in Ventura. Small world!

  Speaking with him was like talking to an old friend. His voice exuded warmth, and within moments we were on a first-name basis. Then to business. I wanted to find out what happened at that lunch Barbi told me about. Did Steve McQueen really make the decision to become a Christian?

  Leonard says he’ll meet me at noon tomorrow at McQueen’s old airplane hangar in Santa Paula. After I thank him with all the dignity I can muster—dignity he surely deserves—and hang up the phone, I skip around the office whooping like a six-year-old who’s just found out he’s getting exactly what he wants for Christmas.

  Turns out that Pastor deWitt and I had actually met several years earlier at one of our Harvest Crusades in Ventura. Small world!

  This may well turn out to be the most important encounter in my quest to learn about Steve’s journey to God. I need to do a lot of thinking and preparing—and I need to fly solo this time. Cathe understands. She always does.

  In the morning I take off early and arrive in Santa Paula with enough time before my meeting with Leonard DeWitt to stroll the historic district where Steve and Barbi shopped for antiques and ate meals without being fawned over. No wonder Steve liked it here. This is where he finally went from being Superstar Steve McQueen to Solid Citizen Steve McQueen, an approachable, companionable, and contributing member of the community.

  At noon on the head, Leonard walks up to the hangar, and we shake hands and take a seat on two random chairs over toward a corner. Leonard knows this space well as he spent time with Steve there before. He told me when it was Steve’s hanger it was filled with perfectly restored motorcycles and many antiques.

  “Steve had always been one of my favorite actors,” Leonard begins. “I didn’t know much about him personally but liked the way he portrayed the characters in his films. His characters always seemed to have a decency and authenticity, and you could tell he was always pulling for the underdog.”

  Leonard says he chuckled when he heard Steve was taking flying lessons from Sammy Mason. “I laughed because I knew Steve had met his match. Sammy was a guy who really lived the Word. Didn’t preach it but lived it. I knew that it would catch Steve’s attention.”

  Leonard had no idea McQueen was attending services at Ventura Missionary Church until one of his children asked, “Did you know Steve McQueen was in church this morning?” Of course he was intrigued by the news, but Leonard decided to do nothing and let McQueen approach him in his own good time. Thankfully, other congregants also gave Steve his space, says Leonard. “Steve asked to be treated the same as the rest of the congregation. People respected that and did not ask for autographs. Steve was coming to the house of God to seek the Lord and worship. Everyone wanted him to have the privacy he needed.”

  At noon on the head Leonard walks up to the hangar and we shake hands and take a seat on two random chairs over toward the corner.

  Approximately three months after Steve started attending church, McQueen and DeWitt finally met. Steve made the first move, introducing himself to the pastor after services and inviting him to lunch.

  They went to the Santa Paula Airport diner, says Leonard, and for two hours McQueen peppered him with questions about Christianity.

  “What kind of questions?” I wonder.

  “Steve wanted to know if all of his sins could be forgiven, if the Bible could be trusted, and what did it look like to be a Christian,” answers Leonard.

  It’s pure speculation on my part, but Steve was probably trying to wrap his mind around the notion of “Steve McQueen—Christian.” After all, he had been Steve McQueen—movie star, race car driver, motorcycle legend, sex symbol, fashion icon, and, of course, King of Cool.

  “Steve wanted to know if all of his sins could be forgiven, if the Bible could be trusted, and what did it look like to be a Christian.”

  After the horrible treatment he had received from a string of uncaring and abusive stepfathers, one could easily see how Steve might recoil from the idea of God as a “Father.” I surely resonate with this personally due to my own fatherless childhood. When I heard there is a God who loves me, it was a huge revelation. Because of the absence of an earthly father figure, I was pretty much a blank slate and therefore completely open to the idea of a heavenly Father who actually loves and cares for me.

  Actually, no negative baggage was attached the term Father for me. Perhaps Steve felt the same way.

  Leonard says he answered each of McQueen’s questions as best he could and recalls it as an intense conversation more than an interrogation. He says he never felt Steve was trying to trip him up or challenge him.

  “Finally,” says Leonard, “Steve sat back, smiled, and said, ‘Well, that about covers it for me.’”

  Ah, that familiar McQueen smile. We know it well from The Great Escape when the Germans marched him back to his solitary cell with his baseball glove and ball to bounce against the wall. A hint of menace was in that smile. “You won’t keep me here for very long!” it said.

  But there would have been no menace in Steve’s smile this time. This one was a smile of pure joy in the knowledge something wonderful had happened to him.

  Then DeWitt says he had only one question for him, but before he could ask it, Steve said, “You want to know if I’m a born-again Christian, right?”

  Leonard nodded and said, “Steve, that’s all that’s really important for me.”

  McQueen quietly revealed that during a service a few Sundays back when the pastor invited everyone to pray with him to receive Christ, he had prayed and it had happened.

  “Yes,” said Steve, “I’m a born-again Christian.”

  My heart leapt.

  Contrary to what some have written and said over the years about McQueen’s profession of faith, it was not occasioned by the death sentence he received from the doctors. Steve’s meeting with Leonard DeWitt occurred fully six months before McQueen was diagnosed with cancer. His decision to accept Christ was entirely of his own free will and totally unfettered by the specter of his final judgment day.

  “Finally,” says Leonard, “Steve sat back, smiled and said, ‘Well, that about covers it for me.’”

  After that lunch Leonard arranged for McQueen to have weekly Bible study sessions with him and an associate pastor, Reverend Leslie Miller. “I had given him a very comprehensive book on Christianity. I think it was More
Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell,” Leonard says. “It was the kind of book you’d give a beginner and that would take him step by step how to grow. His interest in spiritual things was genuine. You could tell that he was thirsty and that he was following through like he said he would.”

  “Yes,” said Steve, “I’m a born-again Christian.”

  Leonard says McQueen possessed a good sense of humor and genuinely cared about people. Santa Paula, he says, was a “place of healing for Steve.”

  He got a kick out of Barbi McQueen, too, and recalls the time Steve asked if he wanted to see his ranch. “You’ll have to drive because Barbi has my truck,” Steve said. But when they walked to Leonard’s car, the keys were locked inside.

  Leonard says McQueen possessed a good sense of humor and genuinely cared about people. Santa Paula, he says, was a “place of healing for Steve.”

  “Wait here,” said Steve. He went inside and returned a moment later with a wire coat hanger.

  “We tried and tried and tried but couldn’t get the car to unlock,” Leonard says. “Then Barbi pulled up in his old pickup and asked, ‘What are you guys doing?’ Steve said, ‘The Reverend locked the keys in his car and we’re trying to get this thing unlocked.’”

  Barbi grabbed the wire hanger from Steve, recalls Leonard, and unlocked the car “on the first try. We kind of wondered about her background after that.”

  In December 1979 Leonard received a phone call from Steve asking if they could meet. He knew by the tone of McQueen’s voice “something major was going on.”

  When they connected later that day, McQueen told Leonard he had just been diagnosed with cancer. “He said, ‘Leonard, now that I know Christ, I really want to live. I believe God could use me, but if He doesn’t hear me it’s okay because I know where I’m going.’ It was so transparent, so genuine, so honest.