November 14, 2005
New York Times & The Palm Beach County Journal
A Community Mourns a Favorite Son Who Defied the Odds and Convention
By Abby Goodnough
West Palm Beach, Fla., Nov. 12 - Almost from the day they were abandoned as newborns in a hospital nursery here, everyone in Palm Beach County knew John and Greg Rice.
If you did not know them personally, at least you had spotted them in recent years whizzing along on matching electric scooters, or honking at you from a Rolls-Royce or another of their custom-fitted snazzy cars. You might have seen them address a school assembly, marshal a parade, or peddle real estate on infomercials.
They were unforgettable, and not only because, at 2 feet 10 inches tall, they were believed to be the world's shortest adult twins.
So Palm Beach County mourned last week when John Rice, the older twin by five minutes and the more gregarious of the two, died of a heart attack at 53. Flags flew at half-staff outside City Hall in Lake Worth, where John Rice lived and sounded off at City Commission meetings, one of his passions. Hundreds of past and current county residents signed an online guest book on the Web site of The Palm Beach Post, trading memories of the brothers.
Everyone, it seemed, stopped to reflect on why John and Greg Rice were such fixtures here, as much "a part of Palm Beach County as the palm trees," as one admirer wrote. They were rich, almost a requirement in these parts, and very funny. But those who knew the brothers said they were also uncommonly generous and compassionate.
"They were the ringleaders of this community," said Representative Mark Foley, a Republican congressman from West Palm Beach who often hobnobbed with the Rices. "No matter what adversity fell on their community, they'd be out there rallying the troops."
They met with a lot of adversity themselves, but luck, ambition and potent senses of humor helped them rise above it. The brothers were born with dwarfism - a condition marked by curved spines, small limbs and oversized heads - and were abandoned by their mother at St. Mary's Hospital. But eight months later, social workers found a foster family for them - Pentecostal Christians who raised them with abundant love and gave them confidence, joie de vivre and the urge to give back.
"Our mom sat us down and told us, 'Yes, you guys are different, but think of yourselves as a couple of dimes in a handful of nickels,' " Greg Rice said in an interview this week. "She said, 'It's up to you to decide what you are worth.' "
Both foster parents died of cancer when the twins were teenagers. After graduating from Palm Beach High School, where they played cornet in the marching band and rode to class on friends' shoulders, they paired up as door-to-door salesmen and then as real estate agents, selling more than 50 homes in their first year and becoming millionaires.
They also tried out Hollywood circa 1980, landing roles in a short-lived sitcom based on the movie "Foul Play" and a reality show called "Real People." But their flair for showmanship got more mileage at home, where they touted real estate listings on a weekend television show that eventually aired in markets around the country. They also wrote and starred in several dozen campy commercials for a local exterminator called Hulett Environmental Services, battling termites, ants and cockroaches to great comic effect.
Along the way, the brothers became motivational speakers, preaching self-confidence and warning against self-pity at schools, churches, workplaces and conventions around the nation.
"They have this incredible story to tell that leaves everybody in the palm of their hand," said Ray Holland, a friend, speaking at John Rice's memorial service. "The message of it is it's not how big a person is that makes a difference, it's how big they think."
Adversity struck John Rice again in 1990, when an automobile crash left him in a body cast for months. He insisted on coming to Hulett's holiday party that year, albeit on a hospital bed wrapped in Christmas lights.
"I never met anybody whose glass was so full," said Tim Hulett, the company president.
Greg Rice, now the marketing director for Hulett, likes to barbecue for crowds at his home here on weekends. But his brother, he said, rarely came; he was too busy riding his scooter around Lake Worth, where he lived in a yellow cottage with a Dalmatian named Zippo, or sampling new adventures. He went Jet Skiing, parasailing and scuba diving, rode go-karts and three-wheelers, played harmonica at bars in Key West and once piloted a pontoon boat to the Bahamas.
He was active in Lake Worth, pushing for the scrappy town's redevelopment and mischievously calling opponents "cave people" - "Citizens Against Virtually Everything."
"He was at every one of those town hall meetings and had a public comment about everything," Greg Rice said. "He'd drag a stool up to the lectern. He threatened many times to run for mayor."
The brothers were coveted guests at civic events: the Marathon of the Palm Beaches, the annual celebrity dog wash at Safe Harbor Animal Sanctuary and Hospital, Lake Worth's Christmas parade, which they emceed for years, and on and on. Greg Rice said they called it "paying our civic rent," an impulse learned from their foster parents.
"Every time you turned around," Representative Foley said, "they were there."
On the newspaper's Web site, people recalled meeting the Rice brothers on jury duty, by a hotel pool, at motocross races, at the Palm Beach AutoMall, even at a pest-control convention in Hawaii.
"I have been away from Florida for a long time," wrote Nicole Brandon of Edinburgh, Scotland, "but my memories as a little kid are punctuated at all the most random times by the Rice brothers."
Bill Cottrell of Sarasota wrote that the brothers' story helped his wife succeed in real estate. "Doris was a timid, shy farm girl and felt she was in over her head," he wrote. "I remember her saying: if John and Greg can overcome their challenges so can I."
One woman wrote that her husband used to work at Hulett with John Rice, adding: "He says John is the reason he is the person he is today. 'Think Big' is what he always said. And you know what, since then he's stopped drinking, bought a house and invested his money."
John Rice was leaving a bank on Nov. 4 when he fell and broke his leg. When he went in for surgery the next day, Greg Rice said, he had a heart attack while going under anesthesia.
"We would talk 20 times a day on the phone," Greg Rice said, "but we never talked about if one of us died before the other."
Greg Rice will emcee Lake Worth's Christmas parade alone, he said, an empty seat beside him for his brother.
