Bellower

Early one morning last week a wet and weary man reached the house in Fairhaven, N. J. where he lived alone, peeled off his soggy clothes and flumped into bed. He was tired because he had come from a program of wrestling bouts in New York's Yankee Stadium where his mighty voice had roared names, weights, decisions, to the crowd. He had got soaked when showers fell during the matches. He sank into a troubled sleep. Before daylight he woke, blinked into the darkness, tried to turn over, made the terrifying discovery that he could not move so much as a finger or toe.

The man was famed Joe Humphries, 63, who grew up in a family of 23 brothers and sisters. A onetime newsboy, his 45 years of bellowing announcements at boxing & wrestling matches, bicycle races, golf tournaments, track meets, rodeos and regattas have made him Stentor of U. S. Sport and his amiable, snaggle-toothed face familiar to millions of sport-goers.

Lying now in the darkness, alone with his frozen body, Bellower Humphries thought of crying out for help, discovered that his famed lungs and larynx still functioned. He bellowed. No one came. He kept on bellowing at intervals as grey light came to dispel the suffocating darkness, as the sun climbed & climbed into the sky. It was not until 10 a. m. that a neighbor who lived across the street finally heard the bellows, rushed over to find Joe Humphries sweating and shivering in bed.

A doctor was summoned, said that the paralysis was caused by a light stroke of apoplexy, that gradual recovery was probable. Joe Humphries balked when the doctor suggested a hospital, went instead to a nearby boardinghouse. The second day he had regained enough muscular control to smoke a cigaret.

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