The Year the Eagle Landed

You really had to be there.

To fully understand what it was like living in America during the nation’s Bicentennial year – 1976 -- you needed to experience it in person, first-hand.

In a country that today seems more balkanized than is possible, it’s hard to believe that-- back in 1976 -- the USA was galvanized, in a wave of patriotism not seen since the end of the second World War.

At least it seemed that way to 16-year-old kid growing up in South St. Louis.

If we really weren’t all unified behind Old Glory, it certainly wasn’t for a lack of trying.

America in 1976 was celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and the country was awash in a red, white and blue sensory wave of patriotism - on the air, in the air, on the ground, and in stores everywhere.

Across America there were thousands of Bicentennial-themed products, exhibitions, concerts and other events. And like most US cities, my hometown was swept up in this patriotic tsunami.

Among the exhibits was something called the American Freedom Train. It rolled into town in April of ’76 and set up shop for a week beneath the Gateway Arch on the St. Louis riverfront.

It was a traveling display of unique artifacts from the history of the nation, and the display was perhaps most memorable to us high school sophomores because its St. Louis stopover afforded us the opportunity to take part in that cherished educational ritual – the all-day field trip.

The entire 2,000-person student body of my school, Bishop DuBourg High, was rounded up and stuffed into school buses, then driven downtown to tour the 26-car train, which according to its brochures, boasted of “500 precious treasures of Americana” – including George Washington’s copy of the constitution, the original Louisiana purchase document, and even a rock from the moon!

To be honest, I had to look all that up, because I remember seeing virtually none of these “precious treasures.” Except, for some strange reason, I did recall seeing NBA basketball player Bob Lanier’s size 20 sneakers on display.

Go figure.

Walking through a stationary train full of artifacts was all well and good, and we appreciated the effort to expose us to some history and, of course, to escape our school-day drudgery for a few hours.

But if we teens were going to have an “experience on rails” – we wanted to be moving - fast.

Which brings us to today’s subject.

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The exact same week the Freedom Train hit town, the people who ran the Six Flags Over Mid-America amusement park in far west St. Louis County unveiled an attraction that would change the face and the demeanor of the 220-acre playground, and give us kids something to scream about in 1976, and for decades to come.

It was a huge wooden roller coaster -- billed at the time by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest (110 feet high, nearly 3,900 feet long) and the fastest (62 mph) coaster in the world.

In a nod to the patriotism of the day, it was called the Screamin’ Eagle.

And, to quote Judy Garland in the classic film Meet Me in St. Louis, it was located “right here where we live! Right here in St. Louis!”

It was designed by the renowned Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters company, and it was the last coaster crafted by master designer John Allen, who believed a roller coaster should inspire excitement not only from its ride, but also from its beauty.

By all accounts, it appears Allen got it right.

For its first five seasons, Six Flags was a nice, friendly, fun but relatively calm place, featuring rides and attractions that were, to put it nicely, kinda quaint: a log flume ride, antique cars, and a skyway to name a few.

Yes, there was a roller coaster – the herky-jerky River King Mine Train. But it was nothing like this new ride.

In 1976, The Eagle transformed the Six Flags experience.

Our first glimpse of The Eagle was awe-inspiring: it rose from among the hills and trees of the park’s Eureka, Mo., landscape like a pure white, pristine, snow-covered mountain range, occupying the park's entire back border. Because it was built on hilly terrain, it was taller than it would have been had it been on flat land, and it dominated the park’s skyline.

That summer, a trip to Six Flags was special.

If we arrived at the park after it had already opened, the allure was enhanced by the excited squeals of joy we heard in the distance, coming from The Eagle’s lucky first riders of the day, and making it more mission-critical to get to the coaster quickly!

Long before the phrase was officially coined, we were experiencing FOMO – the Fear Of Missing Out.

No one knows this better than Jeff Moore. Now living in Delaware as a consultant in the pharmaceutical industry, Moore grew up in Hillsboro, south of St. Louis, and was a frequent Six Flags patron as a ten-year-old in 1976.

The debut of the Screamin’ Eagle, he says, meant we kids needed a whole new approach to a day at Six Flags.

“The strategy was to get to the park early – before it opened. And then, as soon as you got through the main gate, you’d run as fast as you could to the back of the park,” says Moore.

“If you got up there you could actually ride it, exit, run down the ramp and get back in line again. If you did it right, you could ride it before there were any lines at all.”

And once you boarded The Eagle Moore notes, “you’d choose the front seat if the goal was to be the first to experience the thrill of the ride. Or you’d choose the back seat if your goal was to feel the sensation of being whipped through each turn, almost like you’d come off the rails.”

Moore says he rode the Screamin’ Eagle dozens of times as a kid.

And if he tired of the ride, it didn’t show.

He got a job as a Screamin’ Eagle ride operator in the mid-1980s.

“If you were running the Screamin’ Eagle, you were proud. You felt like you were a little higher up in the scheme of things. It was absolutely an honor to be running the Screamin’ Eagle.”

You want to talk about honors? You should talk to Debbie Williams.

She was among the very first of the coaster’s riders – hanging on for dear life before The Eagle was unveiled to the rest of the world.

Back then she was Debbie Leiweke, a 16-year-old who grew up not far from the park.

“My dad was an accountant, and he started with the construction company that built Six Flags, and Six Flags kept him on. Before the season would open, they’d have the administrative people bring their families in, and my three siblings and I got to try out the new rides.”

So, in 1976, it was her fate to be among the first to fly with the Screamin’ Eagle.

“It was a blast. I was never really a coaster person, but this was So. Much. Fun,” she says -- accentuating each word with a cadence that speaks of enthusiasm almost 50 years after that first ride.

“I was really afraid on the first trip. We were going downhill really fast and I’m thinking, ‘where is this going?’ and ‘is this bar gonna hold me?’”

It did, and after that first trip, she says, “we couldn’t run fast enough to get back on. I don’t know how many times we got off and got right back on, but we probably rode it about 20 times that day.”

Once the coaster officially opened to the public in 1976, the world began to take notice of the Screamin’ Eagle. Making sure everyone knew about it was the job of then-Six Flags’ PR Director Bob Kochan.

“It helps when you’ve got something that’s the world’s largest, tallest and fastest, so it got worldwide publicity,” Kochan told me, in a recent phone interview.

“I couldn’t believe how many news clips we saw from all over the world. UPI and AP picked up an aerial picture of the ride that we had taken. It ran everywhere. Lots of publicity. Lots of TV exposure.

“It was the right place at the right time with the right ride. I was fortunate to be the PR guy in that era.”

Which is not to diminish Kochan’s own creativity in marketing The Eagle.

“We did all kinds of crazy stuff. We ran a ‘Coaster Poster’ contest. All the schools in the area would do their rendition of the Screamin’ Eagle and make it into a big poster.

“Back then the Ohio Players had a song called Love Roller Coaster. It came out right before the coaster opened. So, I took a picture – and my poor secretary – we sent it to every rock DJ that was playing Love Roller Coaster and the headline was ‘Love That Roller Coaster? You’ll love this one.’

“Any kind of gimmick I could figure out I said, ‘let’s do it. Let’s get the word out and give them something to talk about.’”

Local media were eager to spread the word about the Screamin’ Eagle – building a buzz and crowding the park with people who wanted to be among those along for the ride.

“We never published attendance figures, but I think ‘76 was the first year we went over two million people in attendance for the park season. That was huge back then,” says Kochan.

Media attention helped spread the word but in one instance, it had a nearly disastrous effect. Local TV stations were invited to send reporters to the park to ride The Eagle before it opened, and KMOX-TV (now KMOV) sent reporter Herb Humphries.

To put it charitably, Herb was a very, very large man.

“Herb was riding in the front seat of the coaster. His camera man was behind him,” recalls Kochan.

“They’re going up the lift, being pulled up that first hill at the start of the coaster’s run – click-click-click. I’m standing there watching from the ground with the park GM. As Herb made the first turn, I noticed all of sudden his lap bar flies open, right before he makes the first big dip. And I’m saying ‘holy cr*p!’

“Later he played the tape back for me and you can hear him saying (something worse)!

“I guess the lesson we learned is if you’re really big, we should probably double check the lap bar!”

As local celebrities took the plunge on The Eagle, so did national figures – helped by the fact park planners were smart enough to place the coaster’s boarding station near the outdoor concert venue the Old Glory Amphitheatre – allowing Eagle riders to enjoy a series of concerts while enduring sometimes hours-long lines.

Being in such close proximity to The Eagle, many of those entertainers would say “we need to go ride that thing – can you get us on that coaster? So, between shows we would escort the act up the hill and let them ride. Somewhere there’s a picture of the Bay City Rollers riding the Screamin’ Eagle. Pat Boone and his family too,” adds Kochan.

The Eagle had a lot of things going for it that first summer – including the fact St. Louis hadn’t experienced anything like it for quite a while, says Kochan.

“There really wasn’t a major roller coaster in St. Louis since the Forest Park Highlands roller coaster, the Comet, which burned in ’63. So, there was a lot of built-up demand.”

The Screamin’ Eagle debuted in the midst of a decade that gave us leisure suits, astroturf and shag carpeting, and in a year that gave us Bicentennial-themed bumper stickers, calendars, coasters, coins, comic books, lamps, magazines, mason jars, model trains, neckties, patches, pocketknives, postage stamps, quilts, rings, shorts, spoons, steins, t-shirts, trains, tumblers and wallpaper.

Homeowners painted their garage doors in a patriotic motif. They did the same with their mailboxes and neighborhood fire hydrants.

There were Bicentennial toilet seats and condoms too. Seriously, you can look it up.

Just about all of those things are long gone, but The Eagle lives on, right where it’s been since it first took wing in 1976 -- a nationally known property with a touch of its hometown thrown in.

Philadelphians may have designed it, but St. Louisans built it, rode it, operated it, publicized it and gave The Eagle its creative juice. The ride’s name and majestic eagle-head-and wingspan logo were conceived by the same St. Louis ad agency that gave the city, “Don’t Baste Your Barbeque, Maull It,” and “I’m a Meat Man and a Meat Man Knows, the Finest Meats Ma’am Are Mayrose.”

Over time, other roller coasters were built at Six Flags, and elsewhere. Bigger, taller and faster rides.

But we St. Louisans still dig the Screamin’ Eagle. We’ve grown accustomed to its face – and its pace.

Bob Kochan’s sister Libby Kochan-Nolan is now a St. Louis radio sales manager, but in 1976 she was 11 years old and living in Alton, Illinois, an hour’s drive from Six Flags. Later, she went on to handle publicity for Six Flags in the 1980’s, and knows The Eagle remains special to St. Louisans.

“Roller coasters were such a thrill to me growing up, and knowing the biggest and fastest coaster was so close was incredible. When I was a kid my heart would race when I ran up that hill to ride The Eagle. I’d see that same look of excitement on peoples’ faces when I worked at Six Flags, and it’s fun to know people are still experiencing that thrill today.”

And it all began in our Bicentennial year – 1976.

It was the year The Eagle Landed.

And stayed.

As always, thanks for reading.