The tall boy. Robert Wadlow. Drwbacks to being the tallest man in the United States. At age five, he was 5 feet 4 inches, the same height as his mother…
Wadlow was a popular student with both his teachers and his classmates, and in the seventh grade he was elected class president. After school, and in the summer, he spent a good deal of time reading, hiking with friends, or swimming at the local YMCA. Thus, despite his unusual height, Wadlow had a happy, uneventful, and relatively normal Middle Western boyhood.
As they ears passed and he grew rapidly taller, Wadlow began to attract the attention of the press. Shortly before his ninth birthday he was measured in the offices of the St. Louis Globe- Democrat and was found to be 6 feet 21/2 inches tall. The Globe-Democrat ran his photograph on its front page, and it was reprinted all over the country. Within a few years “the Alton Giant” became, with Shirley Temple and Baby LeRoy, one of the best-known children in America.
—The Wadlow family in 1935: brother Eugene, Addie (his mother), Robert, Harold Jr., sister Betty, Harold Sr.(his father), and sister Helen.
Life changed when Robert was nine. Due to Robert’s rare and unwieldy stature, Robert Wadlow was sensationalized during the 1920’s and 1930’s. Newsreel photographers and newspaper reporters came and documented him for the masses. Before long, he was known around the world. People flocked to Alton to see the “giant boy” themselves. Some behaved respectfully, some did not. Circuses still recruited people with deformities to be in freak shows at this time. Offers came in for Robert to go on display because of his remarkable height. His family wanted nothing to do with this.—Read More:http://blubabalu.blogspot.ca/2012/03/robert-pershing-wadlow-gentle-giant-and.html
In spite of his increasing fame, and height, Wadlow doggedly tried to live a normal life. He played basketball in junior high school, and to nobody’s surprise was the high-scoring star of the team. Later, as his weight ballooned up to 350 pounds on a gargantuan daily diet of more than 9,000 calories, he became too heavy and lumbering to play basketbasll. Like most other boys his age, however, he collected stamps, had a Saturday Evening Post route, went to Methodist Sunday school, and joined the Boy Scouts. In July, 1931, when he was thirteen years old and 7 feet 3 inches tall, he was filmed by the Pathe newsreel cameras in his Boy Scout uniform and became internationally famous as “the world’s biggest Boy Scout.” In January, 1936, he was graduated with a C+ average from Alton High School and entered Shurtleff College, in Alton. He failed to do well in college, however, and dropped out after a single semester.
—”In 1918, Alton’s most famous son was born: Robert Wadlow. This gentle man became known as “the gentle giant” as he grew to become the world’s tallest man. At the age of 22, he died the World’s Tallest Man – 8 feet, 11.1 inches. His death in 1940 attracted more than 30,000 mourners, and his life-size statue stands in honor of his towering character and inspiring story.”
In the center of the town of Alton stands a statue comemmorating Mr. Wadlow. A great photo opportunity, tourists can stand beside the bronze statue and get some perspective on how tall this man really was. The absence of patina on his right hand shows just how many people take this opportunity. The sculpture itself was made by xxxx, and is actually just a bit smaller that Wadlow himself was. —Read More:http://www.worldslargestthings.com/easterntour/wadlow.htm
By that time, having reached a height of 8 feet 31/2 inches, he was the tallest human being in the United States, and he found himself inundated with offers to make paid appearances at fairs, in parades and for the stages of movie theaters. For years, he and his parents had rejected most such offers, but now, perhaps because he had little else to do with his time, he began accepting them. In the next four years, Wadlow traveled some three hundred thousand miles around the United States, Canada and Mexico on public appearance tours, turning up everywhere from the New York World’s fair to a state fair in California. He even did a brief stint in the Ringling Brothers Circus, appearing with them in both Boston and New York. ( to be continued)…
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