TALLEST MAN IN HISTORY PAYS THREE VISITS TO CAPE GIRARDEAU

The tallest man who ever lived visited Cape Girardeau three times during the 1930s as the guest of local shoe stores for whom he was doing promotional work.

Robert Pershing Wadlow, known to many as the Alton Giant, visited Cape Girardeau in 1932, 1936 and 1939, as a part of nationwide promotional tours for shoe companies.

Wadlow, who at the time of his death was 8 feet 11.1 inches tall, is the tallest man in history, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. At the time of his death he weighed 490 pounds and had a shoe size of 37.

Doctors said that at the time of his death, Wadlow was still growing. Had he lived past the age of 22, Wadlow surely would have exceeded nine feet in height.

When Wadlow first visited Cape Girardeau, however, he was not nearly the man he would some day become. On his first visit, in 1932, the newspaper accounts of the time said he was "a mere boy of 7 feet 3 inches."

Four years later, when Wadlow was a freshman at Shurtleff College in his hometown of Alton, Ill., he visited Cape Girardeau again, this time as the guest of the Gately store at 313 Broadway. In the four years since his previous visit, he had grown to 8 feet 4 inches and weighed 390 pounds.

"Wadlow wears a size 36 shoe and his suits are a size all their own," the Southeast Missourian said.

His final visit came on March 21, 1939, barely a year before his death. Wadlow, who was 21 at the time, had become a goodwill ambassador for the International Shoe Co. in 1937 and was touring the country as a representative for the company. He came to Cape Girardeau in 1939 as the guest of the Gaylor Shoe Store at 104 N. Main.

During his final visit, Wadlow stood on the back of a flatbed truck surrounded by crowds of people, mostly children. He was accompanied by his father, who told the crowd the history of Wadlow's growth and something of his habits as the world's tallest man. Wadlow, who had reached the height of 8 feet 8 inches at the time, stretched out his long legs and gave the crowd a view of size 37 shoe.

Wadlow was a large baby, but not excessively so. When he was born on Feb. 22, 1918, he weighed 8 pounds 6 ounces, but six months later, early evidence of his tremendous growth rate was clear when he weighed in at 30 pounds.

He weighed at least 40 pounds when he began to walk at age 1. By the time he was 18 months old, he was already up to 62 pounds.

His phenomenal growth rate continued throughout his short life. When he entered kindergarten at age 5, Wadlow was 5 feet 6 inches tall and wore clothes that fit a 17-year-old boy. At age 8, he was 6-2 and weighed 195. Two years later he reached 6-5 and 210 pounds. His shoe size at the time was 17 1/2.

It wasn't until 1929, just before he turned 12 years old, that Wadlow and his parents discovered the reason for his growth. At his first check-up at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Wadlow discovered he had an overactive pituitary gland that produced higher than normal levels of growth hormone and caused him to grow at a fantastic rate.

Despite his size, Wadlow tried to maintain a normal life. At age 13, he joined the Boy Scouts, becoming the largest scout in the world at 7 feet 4 inches tall. It took 14 yards of 36-inch-wide cloth to make his uniform.

Throughout his life, Wadlow had to adjust the environment around him to fit to his massive frame and change things that were built for men not nearly as tall as he. His clothing required three times the normal amount of cloth. The front passenger seat of the family car had to be removed so Wadlow could sit in the back and stretch out his long legs. When he visited the World's Fair in Chicago in 1933, it took two turns and 20 cents to get him through the turnstile.

And even when he was in Cape Girardeau, adjustments had to be made. When he slept at the Hotel Marquette, he had to sleep on two full-size beds because one bed was only large enough for him to sit on, but not large enough for him to sleep on.

Wadlow's feet had been a source of health trouble for him for many years. He had little sensation in his feet, and blisters easily formed before he was aware of them. While making an appearance in Michigan in July 1940, Wadlow developed blisters on his feet that became infected.

On July 4, he was confined to a hotel room bed because no hospital bed could be found that was big enough for him. Emergency surgery was performed a few days later and Wadlow was given blood transfusions, but to no avail. The infection lingered and his temperature continued to rise. Early in the morning on July 15, 1940, Robert Wadlow, the Alton Giant, died.