Banana Man: My Adventurous Life

Who is Banana Man, and what is his superpower? And why should you care?

Banana Man is real-life Rusty Hilst, a quirky adventurer and extraordinary human being, and this is his story.

Rusty defies the odds:

• Recovery from rheumatic fever led him to take up golf—now he's in the Kansas Golf Hall of Fame.
• In college he took no education courses, never intending to be a teacher—yet now he's in the Kansas Teachers Hall of Fame.
• As a graduate student, he never attended a football game—yet he became an award-winning sportscaster and football, his favorite game!
• He only ever bought one house, and lives there still—but has transformed its drab back yard into an oasis featured on garden tours.

When Rusty commits, watch out! And now he has undertaken to share his life story. As you might guess, the commitment sprang from adversity.

Recently, at age eighty, Rusty was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's (ALS), a fatal degenerative disease. So what do you do when age and illness compel surrender? Well, if you're Rusty, you throw yourself headlong into a new challenge. And pen your autobiography.

It's all here, Rusty's delight in adventure, his grit and compassion, scary lows and joyful highs. The autobiography sports the twists and turns of a well-crafted novel, but the events are real, reported with gentle humor and clear-eyed honesty.

Is the tale well told? Rusty wrote it. What do you think?

Join Rusty on this journey of a lifetime. And experience for yourself his awesome superpower.

Tags: biographies of educators, sports biographies, biographies of people with disabilities, Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS, real life adventure