Door frames, shelves and public transport don’t worry most people,
but when you are the world’s tallest family, they’re a danger.
Keisha and Wilco van Kleef-Bolton have a combined height of 13ft 5in.
Seven foot of that is Wilco; his wife stretches the measuring tape to
6ft 5in.
Not surprisingly, the children are following in Mum and Dad’s (pretty
huge) footsteps. Lucas is 4ft 5in at the age of six — average for a
ten-year-old. Eva, four, is 3ft 7in, typical of a girl a year older. And
at six weeks old, Baby Jonah is just two inches shy of 2ft long.
The children are destined to lives of stooping through doorways and
retrieving things from high shelves for old ladies in supermarkets.
But what is it like to look down on everyone you meet? I decide to
pay this extraordinary family a visit at their cosy two-bedroom home in
Dagenham, Essex, to find out.
At 5ft 7in, I’m three inches taller than the average British woman, but I feel like an Oompa Loompa around Keisha and Wilco.
You wouldn’t want this pair sitting in front of you at the cinema — something they try to avoid.
‘We are mindful of that when we go out to see a show. We get tickets
for the back row when we can,’ says Keisha, 33, ducking under the
kitchen and living room doorways.
‘We bash our heads several times a year,’ she says. ‘Mostly we duck without thinking, but sometimes we misjudge.’
Wilco, 31, almost knocked himself out on the London Underground.
‘I didn’t realise the ceiling at the entrance of one set of stairs
was lower than my head,’ he says. ‘I bashed it quite hard and it really
hurt. I arrived at work with blood dripping down the side of my face.’
Quite a feet: The family are thought to be the biggest in the world with Keisha and Wilco measuring in at a combined 13ft 7in
Tall order: The couple say they regularly bang their heads, while
their children are already following in their rather large footsteps
Finding a car was equally taxing: they settled for a people
carrier with specially adjusted head rests. ‘Most head rests sit at the
bottom of our necks,’ says Wilco.
Their bicycles had to be imported from the Netherlands, home to the world’s tallest people — the saddles come up to my chest.
But everything else the couple owns is standard size, including their bed — they can’t fit larger items into their house.
Wilco sleeps with his feet sticking out of the end of the bed, while
Keisha nods off in the foetal position. The list of hurdles this couple
encounter is mind-boggling.
‘The biggest disadvantage is clothes,’ says Keisha. ‘We have to get
them from specialist shops and websites, but even they don’t always
cater for our height.’
Measuring
up: The couple have to import custom made bicycles, while both have to
sleep with their feet hanging over the edge of the bed
Trousers are particularly difficult. Wilco has a 40in inside leg.
Keisha has a 38in inside leg, so jeans always end up half-mast, but at
least she can wear dresses as shirts.
Keisha’s parents are 6ft and her four older siblings are all
statuesque (though not as tall as her). Growing up in Jamaica, she
passed the 6ft mark by her early teens.
‘I was constantly teased,’ she says. ‘At school I was head and
shoulders above everyone. As for boys, they didn’t want to know. I
thought I’d never get a boyfriend.’
Only when, at 18, she was headhunted by an American university for a
basketball scholarship did Keisha start to see the advantages.
‘The University of Rhode Island were willing to take me on the basis
of my height and train me, even though I’d never played basketball.
‘So I moved to the U.S. and though it was nerve-racking, it was the
making of me. My height was celebrated and I became less
self-conscious.’
Living the high life: The family with Kathryn Knight and on the right on of the couple’s custom made bicycles
Thousands of miles away in Holland, another outsize adolescent was getting to grips with his height.
Already 6ft by the age of 12, Wilco was put on hormone medication to restrict his growth.
‘The doctor told me that without the medication I could have reached
8½ ft,’ he says. ‘I was perfectly healthy and in proportion, so they put
it down to genetics — though my parents weren’t hugely tall, my
grandparents and uncles were well above average height.’
Unlike Keisha, Wilco insists his height never bothered him.
‘Mum and Dad always encouraged me to feel comfortable in my own
skin,’ he says. ‘I realised there was nothing I could do about it, so I
just got on with it. I soon learned to stand up for myself if I got
teased.’
What he and his future wife had in common, however, was that neither
had been lucky in love — something that changed when, by chance, they
arrived in London in 2001.
Frustrated by the lack of men her height, Keisha posted an advert on
the online bulletin board of the Tall Persons Club asking for a dance
partner.
The Dagenham based couple met after using the online bulletin board of the Tall Persons Club
‘I love dancing, but it got depressing always being partnered by short men,’ she says.
‘I didn’t expect to be able to look up to anyone, but not looking at
the top of someone’s head would be a start. And I struggled to meet men,
generally, as they were intimidated by my height. They would come over
to talk to me about how tall I was and then walk away.’
And so in April 2001 Keisha posted her advert, and Wilco, who had arrived in London just two months earlier, read it.
‘It made me smile, so I posted back saying: “I’m 7ft — is that tall enough?” ’ he says.
It certainly was, and they agreed to seek each other out at the next Tall Persons Club get-together.
Alas, for Keisha, first impressions weren’t entirely favourable.
‘He wasn’t really my type at first glance,’ she says. ‘He was skinny, had a shaved head and was wearing a trench coat.’
When they did finally get chatting, however, they clicked
immediately. ‘We fell head over heels,’ says Keisha. ‘Our personalities
complement each other but, because of our height, we understood where we
were coming from.’
They married before the year was out, settling in Dagenham, where
Keisha is an administrative assistant and Wilco a security guard.
That year, they were named the tallest living couple by the Guinness
Book of Records — a title now held by Californians Wayne and Laurie
Hallquist. But Keisha believes the people at Guinness did not measure
Wilco accurately, as they judged him to be ‘just’ 6ft 9in.
The Hallquists measure a joint 13ft 4in, a whole inch shorter than the van Kleef-Boltons.
‘The Guinness people need to come back,’ says Keisha. Certainly she and her husband are the world’s tallest parents.
‘When Lucas was born, the nurses said how long he was,’ says Wilco.
‘We weren’t surprised. To be honest, I’d have worried if he came out
short.’
Last year, Lucas grew an inch in one month and is growing out of clothes for ten-year-olds.
‘He’s a lot taller than anyone else in his class,’ says Keisha.
‘Luckily, he takes it all in his stride — in fact, he’s quite proud of
it.
‘I do worry more about Eva being tall because I think it can be
harder for girls. Then again, she has lots of confidence so that might
see her through.’
The same can’t always be said for everyone else. While no one bats
an eyelid in their own neighbourhood, it’s a different story further
afield.
‘People point and stare and even take pictures without trying to talk to us, which I find pretty rude,’ says Keisha.
The big day: Keisha and Wilco van Kleef-Bolton with family and friends at Barking registry office on their wedding day in 2001
‘Most of the time people just point out our height to us, as if we
didn’t know about it already. They walk up and say “Goodness, you’re
tall!” I used to say “Goodness, you’re short!”, but now I just smile.’
In fact, it turns out neither of them would change a thing. Keisha no
longer sticks to flat shoes. When we meet, she is striding about in
open-toed heels.
‘I focus on the benefits of my height,’ she says. ‘I can always see
above the crowd like a periscope, so there’s no danger of me losing
sight of the children.’
Wilco, too, has learned to make the most of it.
‘I can walk more quickly than most people and I can see farther,
too,’ he says. ‘So I would say my height offers a couple of distinct
advantages.’
Even if it does mean adopting the crash position in his own home.
YNaija.com
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