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Posted By: barrysloate

I've read that after Robert died, his family destroyed all his clothes so that the general public wouldn't have access to them. He was enough of a spectacle in his life, and they wanted to protect him after his death. I too have found him fascinating, and have seen dozens of pictures of him. His height was so extreme that it is almost impossible not to look. He could never walk down a street without everybody staring at him. It couldn't have been a good life, though it brought him great fame, and it was sadly a short one.
A couple of years ago I read an obituary of a Ringling Brothers performer who had died in his late eighties. When he was interviewed late in his life and asked to talk about what it was like in the circus, one of the first things he said was "I knew Robert Wadlow personally." I guess people who met him never forgot him.