August 2 - Where Are They Now? Wednesday - Rainbow Man

This week’s Where are They Now? Wednesday focuses on Rainbow Man. Rainbow Man, also known as Rollen Stewart, was a fixture in American sports culture. He was known for wearing a rainbow-colored wig and holding up signs reading "John 3:16" at sporting events around the United States in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.

Rainbow Man garnered his first frenetic fifteen seconds of Warholian fame at a Portland Trailblazer Basketball game in 1977.

Traveling around to various events was Rainbow Man’s only occupation. He lived in his car with his wife, a fellow sign flasher, subsisting entirely on donations. In addition to golf tourneys and football games, he's appeared at numerous World Series, the summer and winter Olympics, the Republican and Democratic national conventions, the Indy 500, the Kentucky Derby, the NBA and NCAA basketball finals, the Stanley Cup, the World Cup and the wedding of Princess Di and Prince Charles.

At one point he was driving over 50,000 miles a year, and traveling to over a hundred sporting events.

At the height of his fame and popularity, Stewart once appeared in a commercial for Anheuser-Busch, as well as being paid to attend parties looking his outlandish self. His character was featured on "Saturday Night Live", "St. Elsewhere" and "The Tonight Show." Cartoonist Charles Shultz drew The Rainbow Man into his cartoon "Peanuts" standing alongside Charlie Brown. But unfortunately, toward the end of the 80's, things started getting a little weird with The Rainbow Man.

In the late 1980’s Rainbow Man’s wife left him, saying he had choked her because she held up a sign in the wrong location. A drunk driver totaled his car, his money ran out, and he wound up homeless in LA.

You can insert your own Country Music Song Title here. I prefer “Jesus take the Wig.”

In 1988, he began a string of bombings, mostly with stink bombs, in churches and Christian bookstores. According to authorities, Stewart assembled these stink bombs using a timing device, a knife and an acid filled balloon. This sounds more like a "MacGyver" episode than the Crusade for Christ.

On September 22, 1992, believing the Rapture was only six days away and having prepared himself by watching TV for 18 hours a day, Stewart began his last "presentation." Posing as a contractor, he picked up two-day laborers in downtown LA, and then drove to an airport hotel. Taking the men up to a room, he unexpectedly walked in on a chambermaid. In the confusion that followed he drew a gun, the two men escaped, and the maid locked herself in the bathroom. The police surrounded the joint, and Stewart demanded a three-hour press conference, hoping to make his last national splash. He didn't get it. After a nine-hour siege the cops threw in a concussion grenade, kicked down the door, and dragged him away.

Where is Rainbow Man Now? He is currently serving out three life sentences in jail on kidnapping charges.

I never bought into Rainbow Man’s message. I just wanted to know where he got great seats to so many sporting events.

Captain Buckeye, once thought as a copy-cat character without the religious overtones, appeared at many Ohio State sporting events in the 1980s and 90s. His current whereabouts are unknown.