"William J. "Billy" Arthur, well-known journalist, newspaper publisher, legislator, businessman and dwarf, died Monday, March 27, 2006 at Carolina Meadows Health Center."
This is the lead to an obit in the Raleigh News & Observer. A friend e-mailed it to me and said: you don't see many like this. The list of accomplishments is impressive and then you get to that last descriptor: dwarf.
In North Carolina, this man was A STATEWIDE PRESENCE, THOUGH HE WAS 42 INCHES TALL.
He didn't hide. He "went all out."
He was a politician. With his wife, he operated several businesses. And he wrote a newspaper column that ran for 66 years. He also sang on Broadway and was, in his youth, head cheerleader at UNC-Chapel Hill.
The friend who sent me the obit said her father remembered running into him on the street in the '40s and '50s and if you squatted down to talk with him, he would squat down too. "Just to keep things equal."
Friday, March 31, 2006
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