Patrick Swayze: 5 Things You Didn't Know

Patrick Swayze:

5 Things You Didn't Know

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Today, we join untold millions worldwide to say a sad goodbye to Hollywood icon Patrick Swayze.

Although he played dozens of roles, Patrick Swayze's legacy as a true leading man, profoundly stamped into the anguished hearts of so many women, stems from just two unforgettable roles: Johnny Castle (Dirty Dancing) and, to a lesser extent, Sam Wheat (Ghost).

Castle was, by far, Patrick's most iconic role. Dirty Dancing is a film-turned-phenomenon that has practically become required watching material for teenage girls the world over, and it has a permanent place in the collections of grown women everywhere. Sound like an exaggeration? A recent British poll found that Dirty Dancing was the movie that women reported having seen the most times — on average: 15. A musical based on the film shattered box office records worldwide, from Canada to Germany to London's famed West End, where it sold out for six months solid — before it even opened.

Of course, a man is more than the sum of his roles, and Patrick Swayze's passing brings to an end an uncommon life — one marked by a wide pendulum that routinely swung him between peaks reaching into the constellations and valleys deep in tragedy and despair. It was a life Patrick Swayze led, regardless of where the pendulum was, with exceptional dignity and humility.

In deference to such an understated ladies' man and one hell of a guy, we present five things you didn't know about Patrick Swayze.



1- Patrick Swayze landed a Cessna in the suburbs

Like his wife, Patrick Swayze was a licensed, experienced pilot with Instrument Rating (authorized to fly using only the instrument panel to navigate).

In 2000, while flying with his dogs in a twin-engine Cessna from Southern California to his ranch in Las Vegas, Patrick Swayze experienced what he called a "pressure bump" or pressurization failure while flying over Prescott Valley, Arizona. He began looking for an emergency air strip. After passing on two options once he spotted people on them (it was the middle of the afternoon), Swayze finally found a street inside the Mingus West suburban community. Before the plane came to a stop, Swayze's Cessna first bounced off the ground, knocked out a pair of street light poles, clipped a street sign, and thumped a utility box.



2- Patrick Swayze was married to the same woman for over 30 years

In a display of player defiance rarely seen in Hollywood beyond Paul Newman , Patrick Swayze was always a one-woman man.

Patrick Swayze was 19 years old when he first met Lisa Niemi, a girl four years his junior and a student at his mother's Houston-area dance studio. Although, by his own account, he did plenty of flirting with many of his mother's students, Niemi was different and they began a chaste relationship that survived the four years he spent in New York City. About five years after they first met, in 1975, they married. Somehow they managed to stay together through enormous personal loss (such as the death of Patrick's father in 1982), alcohol abuse and, most significantly, his steady rise from obscurity to iconic movie star and sex symbol to millions of women.

Patrick Swayze was one of Hollywood's greats, and he will be missed by all...