Ironclad

Celebrating a Deathday™: Legendary — sedentary — lawman, Perry “Ironsides" Mason. This dashing — some say, "bearded" — justice seeker was a prominent defense attorney before a sniper's rear-window bullet landed him in the wheeled, "iron-sided" chair that earned him his nickname. He bounced — or rather, rolled — back into the prime time a new man, leaving behind the courtroom for the Streets of San Francisco (a Quinn Martin® production), where he pursued criminals with abandon, wheeling up alongside their getaway motorcars and bumping them off the road with two-wheeled aplomb. Indeed, his fearlessness would garner him a second nickname — "Iron Balls" — that we're told he rather fancied. Of all the handicapped crime proceduralists of the era — Longstreet (sight-challenged), Kojak (hair-challenged), Columbo (poor posture), Charlie Chan (poor diction), Cannon (poor diet), Father Dowling (Catholic), Banaczek (Polish), Magnum (Hawaiian), Pepper Rodgers (high-heeled), Hec Ramsey (black-lunged), McCloud (horse-bound), McMillan (closeted), Shaft (can you dig it?) and Harry O. (David Jansen) — "Ironsides" was in a class by himself. Indeed, his prowess so impressed his associates Della Street and Paul Drake that they also took to wheeled chairs, solving crimes as a self-appointed Modular Squadron™. A doff of the cap and a shift of the chair gear to "IronBalls" "Ironsides" Mason, who took his final spin, September 13, 1993. R.I.P. Citizen CrimeFlighter™.