Kirby Grant, Star of TV’s ‘Sky King,’ Dies in Crash on Way to Shuttle Launch

Television’s “Sky King� was killed Wednesday when his car crashed into a ditch as he was driving to watch the launch of the space shuttle Challenger.

Kirby Grant, attired in the cowboy hat and boots that endeared him to a generation of young Americans in the early 1950s, had been invited to view the launch by one of the astronauts, said Grant’s longtime neighbor, Shirley Tiffany. The unnamed astronaut, she said, had told Grant that the TV series had sparked his interest in aviation.

Florida Highway Patrol Capt. Mike Kirby said Grant was traveling east on Florida 50 toward the Kennedy Space Center when he evidently swerved onto the shoulder to avoid a collision and lost control of the car. He was thrown through the windshield and his body was found submerged in three feet of water.

Grant, who was 73, was alone in the car. He was pronounced dead at a hospital in Titusville, Fla.

He was a lifelong aviation enthusiast who had been taught to fly by barnstormers in his native Montana, where he was born Kirby Grant Hoon Jr. An accomplished singer and violinist as a boy, he went to Hollywood in the 1930s, where he led a dance band and sang on radio before making a series of routine B movies.

It was the advent of television that brought him fame. In 1952, he was cast as Sky King in the series of the same name. He portrayed a wealthy Arizona rancher who, with his niece and nephew, used a twin-engine Cessna in lieu of a horse to traverse the West in search of evildoers.

Grant, his wife, one of his two daughters and granddaughter had moved to Florida, where he pursued a real estate career. Most recently he had been a good-will ambassador for Sea World of Orlando.