George Bell was 7 feet 8 inches and was 67 years old in Durham, North Carolina on March 19th.
His death was announced by the Norfolk Sheriff's Office in Virginia, where he worked as a lieutenant for 13 years. No cause was given.
George Bell Jr. was born on June 12, 1957 in Portsmouth, Virginia. He had giantism, a rare condition in which giant growth hormones cause very high.
Its height attracted a lot of attention on Mr. Bell.
“Sometimes I don't know how to adapt to comments,” he said in a 1982 interview with the New York Times.
The first question Bell was often asked was whether he played basketball. “I couldn't play in high school,” he said in an interview. “I was growing rapidly. My body couldn't adjust to my growth. I entered high school 6-5 and left 7-5¾.
He eventually played as a backup center at Biola University, a Christian school in Los Angeles. He helped the team reach the final of the NAIA Tournament, the Small College team's national playoffs in 1982.
He then played for the Harlem Withers, an entertainment team similar to the Globetrotters.
Mr. Bell had ambitions to become an actor. At the closing ceremony of the Olympics held in Los Angeles in 1984, a “UFO” appeared at the top of the stadium, and an alien appeared. Bell was under the mask. He thrusts his arm into the air, signaling the beginning of the fireworks.
A few years later, he appeared as Tall Man Ghost in several episodes of the television series “American Horror Story.”
“There are many challenges to being so tall,” he told AMC in 2013, a network that broadcasts “American Horror Story.”
His survivors include his daughter, Dorny Bell.
Guinness listed Bell as the tallest person in the country for several years, but he later thought someone was a little taller. The other man passed away in 2021, but Guinness is no longer tracking the country's categories.
Those who knew Mr. Bell always described him as a gentle “gentle giant.” He worked with local schools on the program to stop bullying.
