DELORES PULLARD

Delores was born in 1946 and began to make news in 1961 at age 14 when she was treated for a knee injury sustained in a basketball game. Delores said she enjoyed the game but that she didn't get much exercise playing because "I just stand under the basket through the whole game. When they throw me the ball, I put it through."      There was a son and three other daughters in the Clarence Pullard household but all were of average height.  Although her mom was 5 feet 11  her dad was only 5 feet 9.  Doctors speculated Delores' rapid and sustained growth might be due to a tumour pressing on her pituitary gland.  As it turns out, they were right.

Delores was a 12.5 pound baby. She was 5' 2" at age 6 and 7 feet tall at age 14!

When Delores was 19 years old  she joined up with the Walter Wanous sideshow and about three years later she married a Mr. James Johnson who was "only" six feet one and who also worked with the show.

(Photo Caption) An 8-foot-2 inch, 431 pound Louisiana woman is scheduled for surgery today at Methodist Hospital in Houston to remove a tumor that made her a giant and threatens her vision.  Mrs. Delores Pullard Johnson of DeQuincy, La., has a tumor on her pituitary gland at the base of the brain that caused her to suffer from acromegaly.  The 24 year old woman, first learned of the tumor when she was taken to New Orleans Charity Hospital at age 14 with a back injury.  She has been in a wheel chair since the back injury.  The picture was taken in February 1971 at Houston's Ben Taub General Hospital.  Head nurse Mrs. Ann Dale helps Mrs. Johnson out of her wheel chair.

The scheduled three-hour operation did not go as planned.  Ten hours later Delores was wheeled into the recovery room.  Though doctors initially rated her condition as satisfactory, she never really recovered from the operation.  Delores died at the hospital a week later.  She was buried back in her Louisiana hometown.  The Guiness Book of World Records (1973) states her true height as 7' 5 1/2"