He was an amateur boxer who won 56 bouts and lost one, and was a charter member and vice president of the San Francisco chapter of the Hells Angels. School never interested him he dropped out in the ninth grade and never went back. He often recalled he had to walk to school barefoot.

His father was a sea captain who abandoned the family, and Mr. He was a man's man, but a lot of the ladies liked him too.'Mr. He was a fitness buff who pounded a heavy punching bag every day well into his 70s. 'He collected antiques, played the banjo and could sing sea chanteys by the hour. 'He was at home behind the wheel of a sailboat in a roaring gale, or at the reins of a covered wagon in the Texas hill country,' Carroll said. 'He was a larger-than-life adventurer,' said Jerry Carroll, a former Chronicle reporter and long time friend. Jarvis was a Hells Angel, a blue water sailor, a boxer, a karate instructor, an author and a journalist. Birney Jarvis, a retired San Francisco Chronicle reporter whose life read like a script for an adventure movie, died at his home in Bay Minnette, Ala., on June 3, 2012.

Bart harley jarvis