Before Colin Kaepernick and "Just Do It," there was Gary Gilmore and "Let's do it."
In a plain T-shirt with a bag over his head, Gilmore was strapped into a chair, waiting for a firing squad to execute him at Utah State Prison. It was the morning of Jan. 17, 1977, and Gilmore, convicted of murdering a gas station employee and motel manager in Utah the year before, was to become the first person in the United States to be executed in nearly a decade. The author Norman Mailer wrote in his 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Executioner's Song" that shortly before his execution, 36-year-old Gilmore was asked if he had any last words.
"Let's do it," Gilmore reportedly said. As the Washington Post reported at the time, Gilmore did not flinch when he was executed.
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