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. Just a few months after Chuck Norris' younger
brother, Wieland, was born, their father was drafted into WWII. In his memoir, Against All
Odds: My Story, Norris recounted his family getting one of the worst messages imaginable: Ray
Norris was MIA. When he ultimately returned to the family, his time in the war weighed heavily
on him, and his alcohol addiction grew worse. Norris recalled some harrowing incidents,
writing about his father threatening his mother, trying to get her to give him the five
dollars she'd put aside for food. Norris wrote, "When he was drunk, little things often sent
him into a rage. If he heard the water running while he was suffering from a hangover, he
would explode in an abusive tirade, roaring threats and expletives. [...] While Mom tried to
calm him down, Wieland and I hid in the bedroom." Norris wrote about his eternal hope that one day
the drinking would stop, but he also wrote about realizing that wasn't going to happen. And
it took years, but the worst did happen: Not long after the birth of Norris' youngest brother,
Aaron, their father was driving drunk when he hit and killed a woman. Convicted and sentenced
to a work camp, they visited him regularly. Norris recalled being hopeful that it would
encourage his father to stay sober, but that hope was short-lived. After he was released, Norris
stated that Ray went right for the bar, writing, "Dad was becoming increasingly aggressive
at home and abusive toward Mom. Luckily, he was too drunk to take my threat too seriously." That, he said, was when the family realized
they had no choice but to leave for good. "He always was like the man in the
house, because his father wasn't there." Chuck Norris is famously patriotic: He's so
patriotic, in fact, that he wrote Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America as a
sort of blueprint of how to fix all that he saw wrong with the country. He hasn't
always had such an unconditionally devoted attitude toward the country, though, and when
he appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in 1993, he shared the heartbreaking story of how his
brother Wieland was killed during the Vietnam War. He had been acting as the point man on a
patrol when he realized they were walking into a Viet Cong ambush, and he tried to warn
the rest of his unit. He was shot and killed. Norris went on to say that they'd found out
what happened from one of the other soldiers who had been there: He attended Wieland's
funeral, and made sure that his family knew that he had given his life to warn
his fellow soldiers of immediate danger. "The conflict cost over three million lives." When Cavett asked if the loss was
made worse by the loss of the war, Norris explained that when the U.S. first
got involved, he was 100% behind it, saying, "I'm one of these ultra-patriotic type guys.
But reflecting back, [...] realizing what kind of a war it was, it was a war of monetary gains,
rather than a war of principle. [...] I think it was a war that could not be won, [...] and we
have to be careful about that in the future." Chuck Norris' first marriage ended in divorce, and he stated in his memoir that he
was absolutely devastated, writing, "Divorce was a shock to my system. Besides
the emotional issues of dealing with a sense of failure, I was suddenly thrown into a
whole new lifestyle. [...] All my life I had been accustomed to being taken care of
and nurtured by strong, wonderful women." His entire life changed when he got a
letter in the mail from Dianna DeCioli, and she was writing to tell him that she was his
daughter. Her mother, Johanna, had a short-term fling with the then-married Norris when he was
in the military, and Norris stresses that he never actually told her that he was married. She
later discouraged her daughter from reaching out to him — saying it would ruin his marriage — but
with the news of his divorce, she reached out. Norris said that he knew he was her father as soon
as he saw her, and that he struggled with what he'd done: His faith had taught that extramarital
affairs were a definite sin, and not only did he feel the weight of the sin, but also guilt over
not being there for his daughter and her mother. By 2017, Chuck Norris' fans were beginning
to notice that he had sort of stepped away from the limelight — and according to a
statement he gave to The Washington Post, there was a heartbreaking reason for his absence.
He stated that over the past several years, he had been focused on his wife, Gena's, health. Gena O'Kelley had undergone an MRI scan
as a test for the possibility she would develop rheumatoid arthritis, and after
the test, she experienced a laundry list of symptoms that included tremors, numbness, and
difficulties putting thoughts and words together. "My whole body was just tremoring." In an interview with CBS, the couple said Gena had to be taken to the emergency room
multiple times. She spent months in the hospital and accumulated bills to the tune of $2 million.
That included treatments to repair her central nervous system, and trips to China for stem cell
therapies. Norris spoke about the fear he felt: "And I said there's nothing going on here, she's
dying, she's dying right in front of me here." He continued that it wasn't just about her,
and that it was about the others who had been diagnosed with illnesses connected
with gadolinium deposition disease. "I had IVs literally every day for five months." They initially filed a $10 million lawsuit against the companies manufacturing the dye
that Norris blamed for her illness, but the lawsuit was voluntarily
withdrawn, and no settlement was arranged.
