George Bell, who at 7 feet 8 inches was called the tallest man in the United States, died on March 19 in Durham, N.C. He was 67.
His death was announced by the Norfolk Sheriff’s Office in Virginia, where he worked as a deputy for 13 years. No cause was given.
George Bell Jr. was born on June 12, 1957, in Portsmouth, Va. He had gigantism, a rare condition in which a high level of growth hormone causes great height.
That height brought Mr. Bell a lot of attention.
“Sometimes you don’t know how to adjust to the comments,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1982. “I never had anyone else around who was 7-8 who I could talk to and who could help me learn how to handle it. Fortunately for me, I’m a very patient person.”
The first question Mr. Bell was often asked was if he played basketball. “I couldn’t play in high school,” he said in the interview. “I was growing so rapidly, and my body couldn’t coordinate with my growth. I got into high school at 6-5, and I left at 7-5¾. When I got into college, I had to rebuild myself all over again.”
He did eventually play for Biola University, a Christian school in Los Angeles, as a backup center. He helped the team get to the final of the N.A.I.A. tournament, the national playoff for small college teams, in 1982.
He then played for the Harlem Wizards, an entertainment team similar to the Globetrotters.
Mr. Bell had some ambition to be an actor. At the closing ceremony for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, a “U.F.O.” appeared at the top of the stadium, and an alien emerged. Underneath a mask was Mr. Bell. He thrust his arms in the air, signaling the start of fireworks.
Years later, he appeared as the Tall Man Ghost in a few episodes of the television series “American Horror Story.”
“There’s a lot of challenges for us being so tall,” he told AMC, the network that broadcast “American Horror Story,” in 2013. “Like how do I fit in cars, or where do I find clothes? I have a hard time sleeping in beds. Those challenges are not an issue to me at all. I’ve learned over the years of living just to deal with them as they are and not let it become a mental problem.”
His survivors include a daughter, Dawnie Bell.
Guinness listed Mr. Bell as the nation’s tallest person for several years, although he was then surpassed by someone a fraction taller. The other man died in 2021, but Guinness no longer tracks the category by nation.
Those who knew Mr. Bell invariably spoke of him as a soft-spoken “gentle giant.” He worked with local schools in programs to stop bullying.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/us/george-bell-tallest-man-dead.html
