https://www.facebook.com/pages/Remebering-Robert-Earl-Hughes/1453437911614105
Robert Earl Hughes Facebook Page.
Song about Robert Earl http://www.sideshowworld.com/81-SSPAlbumcover/Fat/Robert/Hughes.html
http://www.washingtontimesreporter.com/article/20080430/News/304309966/?Start=1
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/June-2001/Heavy/
Heavy
By the time he died at 32 in 1958, Robert Earl
Hughes of tiny Fishhook, Illinois, weighed more than 1,000 pounds, earning a
place in The Guinness Book of World Records as the largest man on earth. Except
for his neighbors and family, few people knew much about his life until
recently, when an astonishing photograph sent the author in search of Hughes’s
real story: Raised in a sharecropper’s cabin, trapped inside half a ton of
flesh, this literate, companionable young man had dreamed of seeing the world.
Aside from some carnival tours and one disastrous trip to New York, he never
lived his dream. But in his short life, he found something else.
By Robert
Kurson
Published
April 14, 2011
A few months ago, this magazine published photographs from the portfolio
of Robert Natkin, a local photographer who worked in the 1940s and 1950s.
Natkin trained his lens mostly on hardened city people and landscapes, and his
work resonated with the black-and-white urgency of an artist who believed he
was shooting stories, not subjects. My job was to write a short essay to
accompany his work. Most of the photos were slice-of-life Chicago: poor folk;
bathing beauties; a jailbird; factory workers. One photo, however, seemed misplaced,
as if it had wandered from a different collection and had settled into Natkin’s
book for the night. It showed a rail-thin young farmer playing checkers with a
very heavy man. I recognized the large man immediately. He was Robert Earl
Hughes, and I knew him from The Guinness Book of World Records. I
remembered his weight—1,041 pounds—and another odd detail that had lingered in
my memory since childhood: Hughes had been buried in a piano case.
There is
much to behold in the photo—piled rolls of flesh, a five-foot-wide chair,
tent-size overalls, brotherhood. I did not think to write about any of that. I
stared at the picture for much of the day, and when I considered how to
describe such a scene, one thought kept returning. I knew the heavy man was lonely.
* * *
My dad
was fat. At the time I was born, he stood 5 feet 11 and weighed 280 pounds.
Like many little boys, I worshiped my father. He was a traveling salesman, and
my first memory of him is from a business trip we took together when I was
four. We had stopped outside a steak house for dinner, and as his business
partner, he allowed me to help close the car trunk. I slammed my thumb in the
trunk lid and it began to swell. My dad took me inside the restaurant, using
his stomach to push past the long line of waiting customers until we reached
the bar, where he ordered a glass of Coke in which I could soak my finger. When
the ice melted, he ordered another Coke. At four, the world is a rush of
ominous faces, fantastic noises, and dangerous happenings. At four, my father’s
size struck me as the perfect protection against a place so large as the world.
I took
many more road trips with my dad (my job was to read the maps, watch the gas,
and tell my share of stories). Out across America, I noticed that people
treated him differently; they were nervous around him, anxious to get away from
him, and I remember thinking as the years and trips passed that a person could
get lonely being fat in America, that my father looked lonely in America. When
customers joked about his weight, I had to will myself not to blubber, even
though I was studying karate magazines and playing Little League baseball and
becoming a pretty tough young guy. In hotel restaurants, when my dad thought I
was still in the bathroom, I peeked around corners to watch him slathering
dinner rolls with whipped butter, even though he told me he never used butter,
it was too fattening. I remember that he didn’t look lonely when he ate those
buttered rolls.
I began
to look into the life of Robert Earl Hughes. I checked libraries, the Internet,
bookstores, magazines. Though his picture in the Guinness Book was familiar to
millions worldwide, little was known of him, save for his hometown (Fishhook,
Illinois) and the year he had died (1958). I started digging. The skinny man
playing checkers in the photo turned out to be Robert Earl’s brother, who was
alive and living on a small Missouri farm. I found his telephone number. Yes,
the brother told me, if I’d like to drive some 300 miles, I could ask about Robert
Earl—might even be a few other folks around who remembered him. I hadn’t been
on a road trip since my father died of a heart attack in 1995, but I collected
my maps and checked my gas, and set out to find Robert Earl Hughes.
* * *
Fishhook,
Illinois, is too tiny even for some mapmakers. Located about 300 miles
southwest of Chicago near the state’s westernmost tip, the town claims the same
general store, two churches, and one-room schoolhouse it did in the 1930s and
1940s, when the Hughes family called it home. Four of Fishhook’s 29 current residents
have agreed to meet me at the general store, where they remember the Hughes
family trading eggs and cream, socializing, and bringing their eldest son by
horse-drawn wagon to be weighed on the platform scale. First, however, they
recommend that I stop at the Pike County Historical Society in nearby Pittsfield
to view a collection of local newspaper clips.
The
historical society opens mostly by appointment in winter, and it is not heated.
One board member, a retired high school history teacher, says that if I can
stand the cold (most folks can’t) and want to read the miles of yellowed news
clippings spread across ancient wooden tables, I may avail myself of the life
of Robert Earl Hughes.
Three hours later and steeped in the outline of Hughes’s life, I arrive at the Fishhook general store. The four residents, including the widow of the long-time owner, have cleared a table in the back, where crinkle-cut snapshots of Robert Earl sit piled in a corner for my consideration. The store, they regret, is smaller than it was in its glory days in the 1940s and 1950s, when the town depended on it for meat, milk, shoes, feed, britches, and hammers; when the upstairs room hosted wedding receptions and lodge meetings; and when children paid 12 cents each to sit on benches and watch Gene Autry movies. For two hours, these people reach back into their lives to remember their friend Robert Earl, and by the time I leave for my hotel, the giant man from the Guinness Book has stepped from the gallery of freaks and oddities frozen with him on those pages, and ambled forward as a living, breathing human being.
Three hours later and steeped in the outline of Hughes’s life, I arrive at the Fishhook general store. The four residents, including the widow of the long-time owner, have cleared a table in the back, where crinkle-cut snapshots of Robert Earl sit piled in a corner for my consideration. The store, they regret, is smaller than it was in its glory days in the 1940s and 1950s, when the town depended on it for meat, milk, shoes, feed, britches, and hammers; when the upstairs room hosted wedding receptions and lodge meetings; and when children paid 12 cents each to sit on benches and watch Gene Autry movies. For two hours, these people reach back into their lives to remember their friend Robert Earl, and by the time I leave for my hotel, the giant man from the Guinness Book has stepped from the gallery of freaks and oddities frozen with him on those pages, and ambled forward as a living, breathing human being.
* * *
This
article appears in the June 2001 issue of Chicago magazine. Subscribe
to Chicago magazine.
World's Heaviest Man remembered as small-town boy
FISHHOOK [Missouri] -- Robert Earl Hughes' weight was both a prison and
a passkey.
The memorial for Robert Earl Hughes sits at Fishhook's main
intersection. Jennifer Coombes/Quincy Herald-Whig
An infant case of whooping cough shook his pituitary gland, triggering
his girth to explode. Robert Earl weighed more than 200 pounds at age
6, nearly double that at age 10 and more than a half-ton by his 30s.
For most of his life, his size left him immobile and home-bound in a
tiny farming community. But his girth also served as his ticket out of
western Illinois: as a carnival fat man, Robert Earl got to see more
of America than most poor folk could imagine.
That's why in Fishhook, residents always remember Robert Earl with a
smile on his face. Fifty years after his early death, folks still
fondly recall the small-town boy who became The World's Heaviest Man.
Robert Earl's hold on Fishhook -- a town 20 miles east of Hannibal,
Missouri, with a population of 29 -- remains remarkable, even a half-
century after he last walked these parts. Catty-corner from Fishhook
Market, the only store in the business district, a four-foot-tall slab
of black granite juts out of the earth. It hosts a light etching of a
large man in overalls, his face beaming a genial smile as he leans on
a thick cane for needed support. Underneath is this message:
"May we not only remember he was the world's largest man from the
small community of Fishhook, but also an average man with an enormous
heart for people."
The memorial went up only last year, after the small community somehow
came up with $3,500.
"In the summer, there'll be somebody stopping by to look at it every
day," says Jerry Dougherty, who owns Fishhook Market.
* * *
In 1926 in Monticello, Missouri, along came an 11 1/4-pound boy named
Robert Earl Hughes, the first child of Georgia Hughes, 20, and Abe
Hughes, 48. A sharecropper, Abe Hughes eked out a subsistence living.
Soon after Robert Earl's birth, he cut a new deal outside Fishhook.
The tiny family had no running water or electricity, but the land was
cheap.
At 5 months old, Robert Earl started coughing fiercely and
persistently, a sign of whooping cough. With no remedy available, the
family waited out the disease. The coughing eventually stopped but
left its mark in a big way.
Two years later, with Robert Earl growing far larger than the average
lad of that age, the family scratched together enough money to visit a
doctor. He had been healthy, except for that case of the whooping
cough. The doctor determined the cough had permanently discombobulated
Robert Earl's pituitary gland. Instead of regulating his growth
properly, the gland was prompting a runaway plumping.
For the next four years, Robert Earl kept expanding. One day, his
parents hitched up the horse and wagon to take him to town, to weigh
him on the platform scale at the general store. Though the 6-year-old
stood just slightly taller than average, the scale registered a
remarkable 203 pounds.
After starting first grade in a one-room schoolhouse several miles
away, the sociable boy liked interacting with children, far more than
he would typically see around his farmhouse. Over the years, though,
Robert Earl's burgeoning girth made the long walks to school
exhausting and excruciating. By age 10, his weight hit 378 pounds,
according to the scale at the general store. His trips into town
became something of a public spectacle, and word of his size began to
trickle through Pike, Adams and Brown counties.
But Robert Earl was not slothful. He gladly would help on the family
farm, feeding chickens, gathering eggs and performing other jobs that
could be done at a slow pace. All accounts peg him as a gregarious,
smiling youngster -- "a very jolly fellow," as former neighbor Harry
Manley, 84, described him.
Those close to Robert Earl say he did not eat like a pig. They say he
had a hearty appetite, perhaps enough to pack extra pounds onto any
person. But they say his meals were not so big as to account for his
enormous size.
Still, by age 13 he had reached an astounding 546 pounds. At school,
he sat on a special bench braced with two-by-fours and wire. But the
walk became risky. One day, he stumbled and rolled into a ditch. His
size rendered him unable to maneuver himself out. Friends ran for
help, summoning several men who used ropes to pull him to safety.
* * *
By age 16, the 5-foot, 9-inch boy weighed 600 pounds. Two years later,
he passed 709 pounds. That year, 1944, he had to register for the
draft. But his parents told the draft board that they had no way of
getting Robert Earl to registration in Mount Sterling, 12 miles away.
So, the draft board went to Fishhook to register him.
Stories about the unusual draft accommodations made papers in Quincy
and other nearby cities -- the first time Robert Earl made headlines.
The stories said Robert Earl, likely the largest man to register for
the draft, wore size 56 overalls, to which his mother had added a 17-
inch swatch of material.
These curiosities caught the eye of savvy marketers. Two years later,
at age 20, Robert Earl made his first public appearances, at festivals
in nearby Baylis and Meredosia. To get there, he rode in the back of
pickup trucks furnished by the festival organizers.
Robert Earl brought photos of himself to the festivals, which he sold
and autographed: 25 cents for a 3-inch-by-5-inch shot or 50 cents for
an 8-by-10. At the Baylis festival alone, he sold 160 photos and took
orders for more. He loved the attention, and offers soon poured in
from other festivals, promising $50 to $100 per day -- a princely sum
to a poor family of dirt farmers.
* * *
After his mother, who had disapproved of her son selling himself as a
freak, died of a stroke, a 21-year-old Robert Earl realized he no
longer could break her heart and decided to use his size to his
advantage.
Publicity allowed Robert Earl to make a good chunk of money. He made
appearances at grand openings and other functions in Illinois,
Missouri and Iowa. One store used his photo to tout custom-made
trousers it had fashioned for him. A tuxedo shop displayed a picture
of him grinning inside a massive penguin suit.
The money was nice. But mostly he liked the appearances for the
opportunity to meet people. As something of a celebrity at these
events, Robert Earl was meeting far more folks than anyone in Fishhook
might see in a lifetime.
In 1953, he stepped onto the platform scale at the Fishhook store,
hitting 946 pounds. Robert Earl likely was the heaviest man on earth
at that time.
The next year, Robert Earl signed his first carnival contract.
Fairgoers flocked to see the spectacle of the half-ton man: 25 cents
per adult, a dime for the kiddies. Despite the gawking, most fans
treated Robert Earl with respect. He didn't mind personal questions,
such as those about the size of his bed (six legs) and his ability to
tie his shoes (he could not).
* * *
Although he loved life on the road, Robert Earl sought more
opportunities. In late 1956, he hit 1,041 pounds. He had officially
become the World's Heaviest Man.
An East Coast publicist saw an angle there. He said Robert Earl was a
natural for variety shows hosted by the likes of Ed Sullivan, Jackie
Gleason and Steve Allen. The publicist offered $40,000, plus expenses.
An amazed Robert Earl agreed eagerly. But the logistics were tricky.
A private ambulance -- apparently, the only vehicle large enough for
Robert Earl to take a long-distance trip -- took him from Missouri to
Chicago's O'Hare Field. There, thanks to special permission from the
Civil Aeronautics Board, he would be allowed to board a freight
carrier.
Newspapers chided the spectacle. The Sun-Times asked in a headline,
"Will He Fit on TV Screen?"
Once in New York City, the publicist put up Robert Earl and a pair of
family friends in a swank hotel. Tailors arrived to take Robert Earl's
measurements for a special suit: He was to appear on TV as The World's
Largest Santa Claus.
But it never happened. Robert Earl never heard another word, not from
Ed Sullivan, not from the publicist, not from anyone. Soon, the hotel
kicked him out for failure to pay his bill. Robert Earl and his
companions were on the street, with no money or hope. They went to the
Salvation Army, which took pity and covered the large tab to fly him
back to the Midwest. He rarely talked of the matter again.
"He was pretty blue," his sister-in-law Lillian Hughes says. "He
thought he could trust people."
* * *
In 1957, Robert Earl joined the Gooding Amusement Co. for a Midwest
carnival tour. In early July, Robert Earl developed a skin rash. When
family members asked if he was all right, he replied, "You know, I
always have this heat in the summer." But days later, Robert Earl's
fingernails began to turn dark blue. His brother summoned a doctor,
who suspected a heart attack and told them to take Robert Earl to the
nearest hospital.
Weakened and unable to move, he was too big to transport into the
building. So physicians came out to the carnival trailer to examine
him. The diagnosis: the measles, possibly from his two nieces. The
disease was causing uremia, a kidney malfunction, and he was fading
fast.
Robert Earl would never leave that trailer -- not alive. He fell into a
coma and died two days later, on July 10, of congestive heart failure.
He was 32.
Robert Earl was not buried in an old piano case as per an apocryphal
story long published in the Guinness Book of World Records. Rather,
the Embalming Burial Case Co. of Burlington, Iowa, built a custom
casket: 85 inches long, 52 inches wide and 34 inches deep. It was made
of heavy cypress and reinforced with steel.
In Mount Sterling, a forklift hoisted Robert Earl's body off the
carnival trailer and into the casket. The funeral was the most-
attended in Brown County, with more than 2,000 mourners paying their
last respects to the World's Heaviest Man. Twelve pallbearers moved
the casket on rollers to the grave site, and a crane lowered the
casket into its final resting place.
A simple granite marker stands atop the grave: Robert Earl Hughes;
June 1, 1926-July 10, 1958; World's Heaviest Man; Weight 1,041
Pounds."
Those who know him say he likely was somewhat heavier at the time of
death. No matter, his record has been far eclipsed since then.
Not that they care in Fishhook. There, they still care about Robert
Earl Hughes -- not about the size of his waistline, but the size of his
heart and his smile.
All-time world weight records
The following list notes the top six heaviest people of all time as
well as his or her country of origin and birth and death years.
Carol Yager, U.S., 1960-94, more than 1,600 pounds
Jon Brower Minnoch, U.S.,1941-83, 1,400 pounds
Manuel Uribe, Mexico, born 1965, 1,235 pounds
Walter Hudson, U.S., 1944-91, 1,197 pounds
Michael Hebranko, U.S., born 1953, more than 1,100 pounds
Robert Earl Hughes, U.S., 1926-58, 1,069 pounds
Source: Wikipedia, based on news articles
http://www.sj-r.com/News/
E
Also, great post Casey!
And children aren’t the only targets. Too many retail venues that have nothing to do with food offer sweets near the cash register. Almost every conference exhibit hall is an endless aisle of temptation–even ones targeting health and health professionals. We live in a culture of indulgence, all the while wanting to believe that it is possible to be thin enough to “get away with it”.
Both of you ladies use phrases like “I don’t want my children to feel deprived” and “I don’t want to be the bad guy”. The later statement is the most true parents do not want to be the bad guy it is easier to pass the buck on to someone else than to realize responsibility. You scream of over exposure to media but you put the cell phone in their hands you put a TV in every room and a computer in their bedroom. The media did not do this to children parents did. TV production companies are not babysitting the nations children for free that is not how reality works. Really think about this who is more guilty marketers or the parents who abandon their children unsupervised in front of the TV I mean really you can’t pop in a dvd.
This is typical story in America little Johnny comes home to a basically unsupervised home because mom or dad are too busy playing Facebook. He sits in his room from 4pm to 11pm playing Call of Duty, watching cartoons and 200 channels of Cable, and talking on his cell phone and internet. Little Johnny might come out once to eat some McDonalds one of his parents brought home because he asked for it after watching a commercial. You’re mad that his meal had a sugary soda I am just glad the kid got to eat something.
If you think that a Clown or a Burger King has been the downfall of childrens health you are delirious. Cindy we grew up in the same time frame it isn’t all about the food, I played outside with my two brothers and the neighborhood kids. We played literally all day long we ran we climbed we biked and swam our hearts out. We come home long enough to get breakfast lunch and dinner. Mom and Dad monitored everything we consumed what we watched on TV what we read, who we hung out with and they had no problem telling us no. If I would have locked myself in my room for 6+ hours a night playing video games my parents would have had me seen by a psychologist and tested for drugs. The only Playstation I had was the jungle gym at the city park and when I did get a gaming system I was not allowed to play it non stop for days on end. Maybe today’s kids would be healthier if they got a little exercise and played outside.
So while you’re worried about fast food, I see other solvable problems first off how insane is it to give a school age mind the unfettered mess of information that we call the internet not to mention all the junk thats on cable TV. With all of the poison and crap floating out there you’re lucky if its Ronald McDonald that grabs your kids attention.
What about the other food Johnny consumed that day school, do a little bit of internet research and you will find hungry high school students and story after story of unsafe food in school cafeterias. Fast food places test their food and sanitation 5 to 10 times more than the USDA recommends therefore 5 to 10 times more than the food in school lunches. By the way while McDonalds and TacoBell stopped using Ammonium Hydroxide in meat years ago, school lunch programs are using it today. Really after a little googling I am beginning to think McDonalds and Subway care more about kids health than parents and schools.
Yes Cindy I blame parents, it is parents that allowed a school lunch program to buy treated meat. Parents expose their kids to marketing and filth by giving them so much unmonitored access to the internet because it keeps them quiet and entertained. Parents take the easy road and avoid guilt by appeasing a childs every want. Grow up if your kid is fat it is your fault, you failed because you didn’t love them enough to stop them from overeating. People need to stop passing the buck and accept responsibility for their own actions. Really why do you think parents buy kids meals at fast food joints if you think the child is making the family’s dining decision you are wrong. Parents buy fast food for kids because they don’t want to take the time away from Facebook to cook their kids a healthy meal.
I was also curious as to how Ronald ends up in schools well it turns out that Ronald is invited into the schools to perform magic shows and shows against bullying. I am a magician so I have some interest in school shows well it turns out that the schools seek out McDonalds for the shows because of the positive message and the fact that they are free. Here is a quick link from Google — http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/suburbs/elmhurst/community/chi-ugc-article-elmhurst-goes-active-with-ronald-mcdonald-a-2014-04-28,0,7703672.story
If Ronald is telling kids to get active then what’s wrong with that? If the message is good and positive then who cares about the medium. And frankly if this clown has the pull on children that you believe I am glad he is using his powers for good.
America needs to stand up and be accountable actions truly speak louder than words. I applaud you Cindy for standing up for children and trying to provide a better example for children in regards to nutrition but I think that you are misdirected. Parents are in whole responsible for the upbringing of their children. Corporations should not be faulted for making their pitch, people should be faulted for allowing laziness and gluttony to override common sense.
Yet, despite our vigilance as parents, she is exposed daily to all manner of junk food. It’s in the lunches and snacks kids at school bring from home. It’s in the rewards given in the classroom by the teacher on at least a weekly basis (often several times per week). It is the basis of the once/week hot lunch program at school. It is the “snack” given out after choir rehearsal, at the beach clean up, at the tree planting event.
I am willing to be accountable for my actions. I suffer through the rolled eyes when I have her say “no thank you” to the cookies and fruit flavoured beverages. I provide alternatives to the teacher who consistently reminds me that I am depriving my child. I explain myself the best that I can to other parents. whilst trying not to be critical of their choices. All of these people are sending my daughter a message: “You poor kid – you are really missing out. It’s too bad your parents are so strict.” And because of that I suffer through the frustrations of my child and her feeling that she is being deprived. I wouldn’t mind telling her no from time to time, but almost every day, I am telling somebody “no” when it comes to unhealthy food.
Where is the accountability for THEM?
Frankly, I find it easier to manage food choices at McDonald’s than at school, other people’s homes and most retail and entertainment venues, not to mention sit down restaurants. I appreciate a location where I can order small, medium or large. And no one automatically refills a soda cup, refills the bread, replaces the basket of tortilla chips, or brings desert without asking. I once ordered a cucumber instead of fries for my son at a resort. I was charged $4.99 for the kid’s meal and $5 for the cucumber. I am ready to write the book, “Stop Feeding My Kid”.
Disclosure: I consult for the McDonald’s owners and operators of Southern California. It was my idea to bring a Happy Meal option on board to So Cal restaurants in 2003: Milk and fruit parfait instead of fries and soda at no extra charge. Today options for milk,fruit and vegetables are available in kid’s meals at most restaurants and the National Restaurant Association has made healthier children’s meals a national priority. I like to say, “It is not where you eat, but what you eat when you get there.”
For what kind of mindset is useful to a parent who wants to feed their children healthy in this hostile food environment I always like the comparison to the mindset of somebody who has an allergy. It has two distinguishing characteristics: Can not assume that anything which surrounds you in your food environment (let it be grocery store, restaurant, vending machine, school lunch, etc) is appropriate for you to eat, and always move in the food environment with a plan of what you will eat next (with some flexibility if you have options) because any accommodation can be made now for tomorrow’s meal but very little accommodation can be made for what to eat right now.
I also think that the reason why we came to this stage of affairs is a larger structural issue: food producers are neither moral agents nor set out to provide us with healthy food. They do not even optimize the use of our limited resources according to our collective interest.
On the other hand if you look at it from the perspective of the individual: we operate by developing habits based on some level of trust. We trust that when we live in an urban environment and need food we buy it in the grocery store. We trust that what is sold as food will not harm us. It is a shock and a great disappointment when you discover that the brands you habitually bought, came to like and could afford have ingredients you never assumed were included or are questionable if not downright harmful (colorings, transfats etc) to your and your children’s health.
This is why I would like to teach my children the attitude of a person with allergy: just because a corporation for profit making purposes produced this product and is in your immediate vicinity at all times is no reason for you to consume it. But of course as you rightly point out, industrial marketing does everything in their power to undermine that decision making and they do it very very well, and anybody who considers not to consume the junk has to have a positive experience with food they can create and a plan to carry that through every single time they want to eat or feed. So you have to stand up against the habitual way of obtaining food and popular culture in addition at all times. A tall order even if you are conscious and have sufficient resources, and I agree that it is fair to ask: How on earth did we get here?
My own kids occasionally come up with something which provides reason for hope when I feel the outrage about the whole food environment situation. My best story happened a few years ago now. One day in school, after receiving a cupcake for celebration together with all the other kids, my six years old licked the topping, bit into it and left the cake there on the table. When the teacher asked him about not finishing it he said: Thank you, I do not like it, it is too sweet for my taste!
To help parents navigate and raise healthy eaters in this environment is the whole motivation behind the Feeding Your Kids program.Thank you for your analysis and insight. Your blog is referenced in the program.
Eszter