We would like to take a moment to reflect on the loss of Bomber, the real life bald eagle tragically selected by the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics Organizing Committee (LAOOC) to play Sam the Eagle, the official mascot of the 1984 Olympics. Bomber was, like all too many, a transplant to LA who paid the price for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, much like many find themselves collateral damage in the Olympics’ brutal, unaccountable wake.
Bomber was chosen to appear for an ambitious opening ceremony that included President Ronald and First Lady Nancy Reagan as honored guests with international leaders, Bob Hope, Brooke Shields and Gene Kelly joining them in the stadium luxury suites.
There was an air of exceptionalism running throughout. We were in the midst of the Cold War, after all. The producers of the event placed an emphasis conveying a sense of bombastic “American lifestyle and music,” as an 800 member marching band performed “American style” marching sequences with precision. This nationalistic appetizer was followed by a portrayal of something called Pioneer Spirit, a reenactment of the American west in the early 20th century consisting of over 400 ballet dancers performing a sequence with props depicting wagons and old west towns.
This was, of course, the self-branded “Capitalist Games,” where the pomp began to outweigh the circumstance. There was all sorts of nationalistic propaganda on display, like this Wild West song and dance routine depicting our history of settler colonialism but played as fun. The spectacle also included over 1,000 volunteers holding large five-foot balloons with ribbons displaying the word “Welcome” in over 100 languages. The great Etta James performed, leading a 300 member gospel choir in singing “When the Saints Go Marching In” and an 85 piano orchestra with 200 dancers performing George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” The saints, apparently, were marching in for a funeral. They even had a guy in a jet pack.
Bomber, an endangered bald eagle, was first discovered in Alaska. He was turned over to local wildlife services before being relocated to the friendlier confines of the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland, where he would live in captivity for the majority of his 22 years of life.
At 22, Bomber was middle aged and captive. He was hand-picked to travel across the country from Maryland to Los Angeles for the purpose of playing the real life version of the mascot known as “Sam the Olympic Eagle,” based off a character drawn and created by Bob Moore, an artist for Disney. The animated Sam was used all over for marketing, appearing in 1984 on programs, posters, toys, soda cans, packages of films and posters.
In a July 1984 Washington Post interview, a wildlife service spokeswoman recalled that Bomber “probably was not your top-flight, magnificent, wild bald eagle. He wasn’t in as fit a condition as a wild bird,” and suggested this was a result of “sitting in a cage all [22] years.”
Dr. James Carpenter, chief of propagation at the Research Center, was concerned because Bomber had spent almost his entire life at Patuxent. The professor believed “it might be unpredictable what the bird would do” during a flight around a large Coliseum in an unfamiliar atmosphere filled with tens of thousands of people. Carpenter was pressured by and capitulated to the LAOOC officials who asked him to disregard his trepidation, emphasizing that the request for Bomber “had the support of the White House.”
Bomber was described by People as a “food-loving, aggressive bird who seldom flew, and who tipped the scales at a pudgy 11 pounds.”
Upon arrival in LA, Bomber was paired with veteran trainer Steve Hoddy. Hoddy had hoped to use a younger golden eagle he had raised and trained named Fluff to play Sam. The LAOOC, however, insisted on the authenticity of Bomber, as only a bald eagle – which were on the verge of extinction at the time – could represent the great United States of America when the eyes of the world’s media descended upon LA.
Hoddy spared no expense, building a $5000 birdhouse with two 10-foot square rooms where Bomber was kept and fed a lean-meat diet when he was not participating in 45-minute aerial training sessions. Because of the eagle’s two decades plus of inactivity, Hoddy needed to reteach Bomber how to fly. According to Hoddy, there were a “few crash landings, of course, but no major problems” during the training. Six weeks later, Bomber trimmed down to a slender 7 ¾ pounds and was able to soar in the sky.
Unfortunately, the flight lessons and newfound fitness were the last positive moments of Bomber’s shortened life.
Two days after Bomber’s first successful test-flight around the Coliseum, where the opening ceremony was set to take place, Hoddy awoke to find the eagle “weak, disoriented and barely able to stay on his perch.” Despite attempts at feeding Bomber Nutri-Cal and Gatorade in order to awaken him, Hoddy recognized a lack of improvement and immediately called nearby veterinarians. After being turned away by five local vets, all of whom cited concerns about treating an endangered species without a license or past experience, Hoddy identified a specialist about 50 miles away in Lawndale, California.
Bomber had lapsed into convulsions as he was carried in Hoddy’s camper to make the long drive to see the specialist, and was pronounced dead on arrival.
Bomber’s autopsy showed death caused by vascular collapse and an acute bacterial infection in addition to a smog-induced lung disease known as pneumoconiosis. A cocktail of stresses – the weight loss, the rigorous exercise, and the toxic smog – contributed to the death of Bomber.
Ten years earlier, then Governor Ronald Reagan had urged Los Angeles residents to “limit all but absolutely necessary auto travel” and recommended slower driving to reduce emissions which were actively causing massive smog levels and several Stage 3 alerts. The state of California did not institute a smog emission test program for cars until 1984, the year of the Olympics, when pollutant levels around Los Angeles were still considered “very unhealthy.” In the late 1960s, California instituted the first regulations reducing cars’ tailpipe emissions. The most significant pollution control device – the catalytic converter – was not required until the 1975 model year. “Clearly, catalysts were the top measure,” said Jeb Stuart, executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) from 1976 to 1986. “Without that, we’d still be choking all over the place.”
National Resources Defense Council President Frances Beineke had declared the environment of this time as containing “unhealthy levels of pollution more than 200 days a year.” It took Los Angeles over twenty years to improve the air quality to reach an acceptable level, just as wildfires, climate change, and a sustained addiction to oil and gas are creating unsafe levels to sustain human life for much longer, let alone outdoor sporting events.
In the scramble leading up to the 1984 opening ceremony, no one bothered to explain why Bomber, a middle-aged, endangered, and overweight bald eagle from Maryland, had needed to be removed from the only real home he had ever known and into an area with significant air pollution nearly 3000 miles away.
Why was an endangered species allowed to participate in an event taking place in an unsafe and unfamiliar environment? Why did Bomber have to sacrifice his life for a sporting event that tore the city apart in ways many people are still experiencing, 34 years later? Bald eagles that are taken care of in captivity can live as long as 50 years. Did the 1984 Olympic games need to push a member of an innocent and endangered species to its death in order to carry on?
Bomber serves as a symbol – a very on the nose symbol, mind you – as an innocent bald eagle choked by smog and killed by Olympic hubris and ignorance – of the violent consequences the games carry with them: displacement of indigenous communities, heightened inequality, enhanced surveillance, increased militarization or, as in the case of this beloved eagle, the cruel and reckless gambits with nature.
We salute you, Bomber, dear comrade, another casualty of Olympic greed and bluster. In a sick twist of Olympic doubling down fates, this travesty would somehow be topped in avian horror in 1988 during the Seoul opening ceremony presentation. The stuff of nightmares.
Rest in power to Bomber and all the others fallen from flight in the name of the Olympics.
If you want to learn more about the ugly realities that the 1984 Olympics brought to Los Angeles, check out these selected articles or this video we made on the connection between LA 1984 and LA 1992.