Daredevil Diver Beats Cancer

Bill Brown's blond hair wafts in the breeze as he climbs the wiry tower to the perch 80 feet above the circular pool.

Wearing nothing but a red Speedo, Brown stops about 20 rungs from the top and peers at the spectators below, most of them wide-eyed children.

''Higher!'' they scream. ''HIGHER!''

Still tanned and toned at 53, Brown clambers onto the square plank, strikes a perfectly postured pose and waits for the children to count down — ''5, 4, 3, 2, 1!''

Without hesitation, Brown springs into a somersault before straightening his body and piercing the water like an arrow. The crowd hushes until Brown splashes out, a giddy smile across his face.

''How was that?'' he yells to the cheering throng.

Brown brought his Orlando, Fla.-based team of acrobatic divers to the Johnson Space Center recently to put on a show that he's taken all over the world. He's dazzled Chinese children, Saudi Arabian princes, even one of the greatest bands of all time.

''I love what I do,'' Brown said. ''It's thrilling enough that it keeps me in shape. And then, look at the things I've done and the places I've seen. I mean, unbelievable stuff.''

Brown has been high-diving for almost four decades and is still taking fearless leaps off the cliffs in Acapulco made famous by the ''Wide World of Sports.''

He also still does a show-stopping ''fire dive,'' donning a flame-resistant suit doused in gasoline, setting himself ablaze and diving off a 10-meter platform into the extinguishing water.

He burned a hole in his back doing that one once. Singed his eyebrows a few other times.

But when you've beaten cancer after doctors gave you a 5 percent chance to live, what could possibly scare you?

''In life, there's risk in everything you do,'' he said. ''What I do, I think about the worst-case scenario all the time. Since I know what that is, I calculate the risks, and feel like I have control of the end result.''

It doesn't always work out that way.

Brown broke his leg making a high dive on a rainy day in Florida in 1993. Another time, he landed on his back and spit up blood after plunging out of a helicopter into a volcanic lake in Chile.

He wasn't expecting that rhino to bolt after he climbed onto its back, either. But that's another story.

''Divers are a crazy bunch,'' he said. ''We're always looking for some crazy thing to do.''

Brown discovered the sport when he was 15, thanks to his high school guidance counselor, who also happened to be the swim coach. Brown dove at a Florida community college and won a few meets along the way, but never quite reached the elite level.

''The Olympics, they only take two people out of how many thousands who try?'' he said. ''I wasn't one of them, and I knew it.''

After college, one of his old coaches asked if Brown would dive in a show at a safari park in Austria. That's where Brown mounted the rhino.

He spent eight summers there, worked in Hong Kong for a few years after that, and eventually found his niche organizing traveling stunt-diving shows.

He was heading on another trip in 1994 when a doctor told him he had a melanoma tumor on his lip. At the time, Brown considered it nothing more than a nuisance.

''I said, 'OK, what's that?' He said, 'Well, those are kind of treacherous,''' Brown said. ''I'm like, 'Well, you're the doctor, you're the man. Let's take care of it.'''

Doctors cut out the tumor, then opened Brown's neck during an eight-hour surgery to see if the cancer had spread. It hadn't, but the procedure left an ear-to-ear scar across his neck that's visible today.

About a year after the operation, one of Brown's lymph nodes swelled. The cancer had returned.

When he started chemotherapy, doctors told Brown there was a 95 percent chance he'd be dead within five years. Brown took the prognosis in stride, even convincing his doctors to teach him how to treat himself so he could start traveling again.

He never deviated from their instructions. Brown figured fighting cancer was no different than preparing for a high dive — if he thought of everything that could go wrong and took every precaution, nothing bad would happen.

''I took those injections religiously,'' he said. ''I knew, if I didn't, I was going to die.''

More than a decade later, the cancer is in remission. But Brown is still doing things that could kill him just as easily.

He performed the fire dive 65 times in one month last summer at back-to-back state fairs. Last November, he placed 10th in a diving event off the 100-foot-high cliffs in Acapulco.

''It's always there, that feeling that maybe I shouldn't be doing that,'' Brown said. ''But there's also the sense that it can be done, that others have done it. So why not me?

''And the best part about it is coming back and living to tell the stories.''

There's the one about the Saudi prince who saw his show and was so impressed, he invited Brown onto his private yacht for a spearfishing junket on the Red Sea.

And there's the one where Brown performed in the middle of Dodger Stadium as the warmup act for the legendary rock band KISS. Lead singer Paul Stanley liked the fire dive so much, Brown got invited to a private rehearsal.

''I mean, have I lived, or what?'' Brown said.

The divers around Brown are half his age. The one exception is Lucie Denault, a 40-something business partner who took a turn performing the fire dive during a Johnson Space Center show.

One of the youngsters, Garrison Davis, wants to become a Hollywood stuntman. Another, Benjamin Amyot, will join Cirque de Soleil in Macau later this year.

Brown is not only their employer, he's their inspiration.

''I would love to be him in 20 years, still have the energy,'' Amyot said. ''He never stops. Pretty amazing life.''