Born on February 22, 1918, Robert Pershing Wadlow was the oldest of his parents Addie Johnson and Harold Wadlow, of Alton Illinois’, five children. He’d outgrown his father, by all accounts before hitting his middle age of 10 years, and had to have special furniture constructed for him both at school and at home. He graduated from high school in 1936, towering over his classmates at 8 feet 4 inches, before heading off to Alton’s Shurtleff College to become a lawyer.

Robert P. Wadlow did not “grow out” of his growth spurt, as most children are assured they will, and do. That’s because it was no “growth spurt” that had the normal eight pound baby pushing 30 pounds by six months, and just over 60 by one and a half years old. Clearly, Robert was unique. But in 1920, there was simply no therapy for such a, shall we say, expressive pituitary gland, a pea-sized structure at the center of the brain responsible for physical growth and development, and the most well know member of the larger endocrine system, which regulates hormonal process throughout the body at all ages. Today, it’s as easy – at least comparatively speaking – as surgery, radiation and hormone blockers to stop the secretion of growth hormone or at the very least the symptoms caused by it.

Symptoms like requiring three times the normal amount of material for a pair of pants to fit you.

How about shelling out $100.00 a pair for some shoes? In 1930, that have been the equivalent of shelling out something to the tune of just over $1400.00 per pair today.

That may have been part of the allure for Wadlow to take on a gig in 1938 doing promotional tour of the United States, along with his father, who removed the front seat of the family’s car to allow Robert the luxury of a bit of legroom. The International Shoe Company had approached him with the offer to foot the bill – come on, that’s funny stuff – for all of Robert’s shoes if he would only travel the country making appearances at local shoe vendors.

Like Valone’s Shoes, a staple of Downtown Warren for the past 69 years, store owner John Dick said, adding that Wadlow made a stop here in Warren in 1939, and that one of his shoes never did make it out of town. It’s been on display in the front window of Valone’s for more than a half century now and, Dick said, with something like 1,000 people having come from in and out of the area to take look at it in those years, “when the weather gets back,” they’ll be showing up again.

Valone’s isn’t the only store that got such a keepsake. The shoes are popular artifacts in local stores all over the country. One even rests in the Alton, Illinois, Museum of History and Art.

Dick said that Wadlow didn’t treat his visit to Valone’s like just another mundane sales stop, either. “He’d put a $20 bill up under his hat, and if you could jump up and get it you could keep it.” Dick said he doubts that Wadlow ever lost out on that deal.

While at a professional appearance in Manistee, Michigan on July 4, 1940, one of the leg braces which had become necessary to accommodate his overwhelming size, and the fact that such growth had occurred due to the release of excess growth hormone before his bone growth plates had been able to properly fuse during childhood, gave him a blister on his ankle. The blister became an infection.

Emergency surgery and a blood transfusion, unfortunately, only led to a worsening of Window’s condition and, on July 15, 1940 after getting the original blister, the infection brought the Giant Down at the age of 22.

Wadlow is celebrated as Alton Illinois’ “Gentle Giant,” or “Gentleman Giant,” and life-size statues in his honor stand on College Avenue, in his hometown of Alton, across from the Museum of History and Art that displays his shoe.

Life size statues of the mythic man from Alton can be be viewed in the Guinness Museum of Niagara Falls, at several Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museums, and in traveling displays that arrive in replica caskets and are crafted by artist James Butler.

And the one that stands outside Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museums, in Farmington Hills, Michigan, that for a quarter will play you a short video about the “Giant of Illinois,” who required a dozen pallbearers to lay his 1,000 pound casket down back home in Alton. Oh, plus eight alternates. Who didn’t really alternate, but assisted. Over 40,000 signed the guestbook at his funeral.

Not a bad turnout, as it would turn out. And Wadlow may be gone but he’ll never be forgotten, by those who have one of his errant shoes in shop windows from state to state. And certainly not to the town of Alton, whose altonweb.com website features Wadlow on their list of historical brags. According to the website, “Robert Wadlow holds a special place in Alton’s history. He is remembered as a quiet young man who overcame a unique handicap, and who was an inspiration to all of those that knew him.”