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Show goes on, minus one twin brother

Celebrities Greg and John Rice were the toast of Lake Worth, all 2 feet, 10 inches of them. Greg emceed this year's Christmas parade alone after John died.

By TAMARA LUSH
Published December 11, 2005

LAKE WORTH - As long as most people here can remember, the annual Lake Worth Christmas parade has been emceed by the Rice brothers, two gregarious and rich Palm Beach County natives. The parade - which was held Saturday - is Norman Rockwell-quaint, with middle school marching bands followed by the Shriners in the funny hats followed by the cute little girls with batons in the pink sparkly tops from the Wellington Spinners Club.

But the Rice brothers, identical twins, always gave the parade a special spin.

They poked fun at the bands, at themselves. Their banter had been honed from years of performing, thousands of sales pitches and motivational speeches. They had sitcom timing; after all, they had once appeared in one.

"We've done this for so long, we can finish each other's sentences," Greg, 54, said recently.

People who didn't even like parades would come just to sit near the grandstand and enjoy the Rice brothers show.

Saturday, at 11 a.m. sharp, two members of the Lake Worth Police Department whooped their sirens and putted down the main drag on motorcycles.

Two miniature pony drawn carriages followed behind. Greg sat in one.

The other carriage was empty.

They were born Dec. 3, 1951. It was clear something was wrong with them from the beginning.

A doctor diagnosed them with dwarfism. Their mother abandoned them in their hospital bassinets.

The twins lived in the hospital for nine months, fed and bathed and loved by the nurses and doctors. Mildred and Frank Windsor, a local couple who knew one of the doctors, adopted them. Just before their first birthday, their biological parents wanted them back. Then they abandoned them a second time.

John and Greg went back to the Windsor home in rural Palm Beach County, where they were treated like any other children.

"I still credit our mom with John and I turning out the way we did," Greg said. "She let us experience life as it was, instead of trying to shelter us. She knew we were going to be different and that we had to do a lot of things differently.

"And she taught us that failure wasn't necessarily permanent."

They were popular in high school, always making others laugh. John and Greg played cymbals in the school band, riding on the shoulders of their taller classmates.

By that time, the twins had achieved their full height: 2 feet, 10 inches.

After high school, they knew they wouldn't be able to get regular jobs like their tall friends. So they sold makeup and cleaning products door-to-door. No salary, straight commission.

"We are built below peephole level," Greg joked. "So we had to take people aback."

Because they knew folks might be uncomfortable with their appearance, they learned to use humor and kindness to put them at ease.

They also enrolled in community college for a year, because they had promised their mother on her deathbed they would get an education.

They told their guidance counselor they were interested in computers. He looked at them skeptically.

"Companies might not give you an opportunity because of your size," he said.

After a year, John and Greg dropped out of college. But they didn't stop selling. Instead, they discovered they had a knack for it.

One day, John was reading the paper when an ad got his attention: "Get your real estate license."

"Why not?" Greg said.

Their first year, they set themselves a goal: sell 50 homes, an impossible amount.

They sold 57.

In the 1970s and '80s, the Rice brothers worked as motivational speakers, actors, real estate investors and television commercial producers. They traveled the world and bought Rolls-Royces, Cadillacs and Mercedes.

They did everything together.

Their first TV appearance was on the late '70s show Real People. A camera crew followed the brothers around for a few days and introduced them to the nation. Phil Donahue, Merv Griffin and a role in a TV comedy followed.

Back in Palm Beach, they had their own TV home sales show called TelevisionHome Hunt. They also sold the commercials for the show.

One client, Hulett Environmental Services, asked the twins to appear in their pest control commercials. They did, as tiny termites, hockey players and even as Elvis. They were among the most recognizable people in Palm Beach, no simple feat in a county that is home to Donald Trump and Jimmy Buffett.

They knew they had made it when the same community college they had dropped out of asked them to speak at a black-tie fundraiser. They pulled up in a new Cadillac, wearing matching mink coats.

That guidance counselor was in the audience.

With success, came love. Greg married and had a son, then divorced.

John met Elizabeth.

She was four years younger, a blond with a big smile who worked as an art director at a magazine. They met in 2000 as they were lunching at separate tables at a restaurant in Lake Worth. They both loved Macintosh computers, food and red wine.

There was one problem as far as Elizabeth was concerned: she was full-sized.

This didn't bother John, but it nagged at Elizabeth. How could she be so attracted to a man who was not quite 3 feet tall?

"Who would date him?" she kept asking herself. Yet, she was giddy whenever he was around. He was always doing something - playing harmonica with a local band, writing a new commercial, trying a new restaurant - and she loved his positive energy.

He also accepted her fears about falling in love with a dwarf.

"He was used to the fact that a woman might be hesitant," she said. "He let me make the move on him."

They broke up, briefly, for three months - Elizabeth wanted to try dating a tall man - but she couldn't stop thinking about him. They got back together. This time, Elizabeth was proud to be seen with him, although her mother refused to meet him or accept their relationship.

On Nov. 3, they split some appetizers and drank red wine at The Cottage, their new favorite place. They went home and fell asleep. The next morning, John woke Elizabeth up as he always did:

"Honey," he said, smiling. "It's time to make the donuts."

Later that day, John walked out of the bank in downtown Lake Worth and fell off the curb. His femur was broken.

He called Greg and Elizabeth, and they all met at a local hospital. No one was particularly worried; John had been in a horrible car crash 15 years before and pulled through. He was a survivor.

John was scheduled for surgery the next day. From his hospital bed, he told Elizabeth that he loved her and gave Greg a thumbs up. He joked with the orderlies as they wheeled him into the surgery room.

Greg and Elizabeth went out to eat.

When they returned a couple of hours later, the doctor told them what had happened: John had died of a heart attack minutes before the operation began.

Stunned, Greg walked into the room to say goodbye to his twin.

"There, lying in that bed, is a part of me," Greg thought.

They put a harmonica in John's casket and buried him in Lake Worth.

Hundreds attended the funeral, and hundreds more signed an online guest book to share their condolences.

"I followed John and Greg on late-night TV with their real estate course about 25 years ago," wrote Bob Creagh from Michigan. "As a poor, young black man, I never had the pleasure of meeting them in person. But they served as an eye-opener to the fact that if you really want to live the American dream, you can - regardless of race, gender or size."

Saturday, a parade organizer gently lifted Greg onto his stool in the town square.

Next to him was a wreath made of pine boughs and red-and-white carnations. An easel held a life-size photo of John.

A half-block away, a condo building was under construction; just before John died, the brothers had bought two units on the fifth floor, hoping to grow old together in the same building in a town where everyone loved them.

Greg took the microphone. Several hundred people applauded.

"Thank you, guys," Greg said. "Merry Christmas."

The drums of a middle school marching band echoed off the buildings in downtown Lake Worth. The Shriners in the funny hats tooted the horn of an old fire truck. The baton twirlers sparkled.

The banter wasn't the same.

Tamara Lush can be reached at lush@sptimes.com or 727 893-8612.

[Last modified December 11, 2005, 02:46:17]