His name was Alvin Anthony Kelly, and he was born in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York City in 1893. When he was orphaned at the age of 13, young Alvin went to sea. He claimed to have survived several ship sinkings, and that was supposedly how he got the name “Shipwreck” Kelly.
Some people said that the name “Shipwreck” came about in a different way. Kelly later became a boxer. He was knocked down so often, according to this story, that the fans began to sing out, “Sailor Kelly’s shipwrecked again!”
Having failed as a fighter, Kelly got a job washing windows of tall office buildings. Later, he became a construction worker on skyscrapers. As Kelly leaped nimbly from one girder to another, he realized that he was not afraid of heights. He quit his job and went to Hollywood, where he obtained work as a stunt man.
One day in 1924, a Los Angeles theater owner hired Kelly to sit on a flagpole atop his theater. The owner thought such a stunt would be good publicity and attract crowds. He was right. People came from all over to see the man perched high up on a flagpole. And Shipwreck Kelly was off on a new career.
Soon flagpole-sitting became a fad. Shipwreck Kelly was the man who started it, and his picture began to appear often in the newspapers. He was collecting $100 a day for his “work”.
Once up on the flagpole, Kelly could sit down on a kind of wooden disk with a cushion. He learned to take five-minute catnaps while sitting. He put his thumbs into holes in the pole so that if he began to waver, the sudden pain in this thumbs would jolt him awake. For standing he had a platform only eight inches square. There were ropes to keep him from stepping off the platform, but nothing to keep him from toppling over. He could only inch around the platform in order to get comfortable.
Food and water and makeshift toilet facilities were hauled up by rope. Kelly had a blanket which he could hang up to afford him a little privacy.
By 1927 Shipwreck was nationally famous. But now there were so many flagpole-sitters that the police began to arrest them on charges of being a public nuisance. Kelly had his troubles, too. For one thing, many other men began to call themselves “Shipwreck Kelly.” Kelly tried to stop them, but there were so many that he had to give up. Also, the police began to interfere. Once when he sat on a flagpole on top of a hotel, he drew such a huge crowd that he was slapped with a summons for blocking traffic. On another occasion he had to climb down because a policeman appeared with an axe and threatened to chop down the pole with Kelly still on top of it.
Wherever there was a pole, Kelly would climb it for a fee. He roosted on poles fastened to moving trains and trucks. He even tried a pole tied to an airplane–when the plane was in the air. Meanwhile, his agents sold pamphlets telling “the life story” of Shipwreck Kelly to astonished spectators.
By 1929 flagpole-sitting was something of a “new sport.” That year Kelly sat on a pole over the old Madison Square Garden, and a reporter was hauled up by rope to interview him. Next came a job at a Baltimore amusement park. He stayed up for 23 days and finally came down to a roaring ovation.
Now others were joining the “fun.” A 15-year old boy named “Azie” Foreman went up a pole behind his house in Baltimore and stayed there for ten days. Great crowds came to see the boy. When he finally climbed down, Azie was given a scroll by the Mayor of the city. While he was on the pole, Azie sang bits of a song called “The Flagpole Melody.”
Soon Azie’s record was broken by a younger boy named Jimmy Jones, also from Baltimore. Jimmy stayed aloft for twelve days, and practiced on the violin, too.
Next came young Billy Wentworth. Billy had the backing of his church. While he was up on the pole, the minister conducted preach-ins and hymn-sings.
Youngsters all over America, from the age of eight and up, were shinnying up flagpoles. Forgotten were the traditional games of summer, baseball and jump rope and hopscotch. It was crazy! Police were unable to do very much to stop the craze, but they did issue licenses to the youngsters who wanted to climb flagpoles. Then they went around checking on the ropes and rigging to determine if they were “safe.”
Flagpole-sitting records do not mean very much. Even today some people spend weeks on top of poles to get into the record books. However, Shipwreck Kelly did establish a record and sorts. In 1930, he went up a pole and stayed there from June 21 to August 9, a total of 1,177 hours. He made a radio broadcast from the pole. And a pretty girl was hauled up to give him a haircut. The fee was $4.25, and he gave her a $5 bill. “Keep the change,” he said loftily.
But as the 1930s arrived, flagpole-sitting began to die out. Some people, including Kelly, still went up from time to time, but nobody really cared.
On October 11, 1952, Shipwreck Kelly collapsed on the street and died of a heart attack. Under his arm was a scrapbook filled with faded clippings telling of his past glories. The police discovered that Shipwreck was on welfare and lived in a dingy furnished room. All his possessions were in a single duffel bag. Among them were his old ropes and pulleys, the unused tools of a forgotten and unemployed flagpole-sitter.
From The Giant Book of Strange But True Sports Stories by Howard Liss. Illustrations by Joe Mathieu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_%22Shipwreck%22_Kelly
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