Biography: From her obit (Associated Press):

Although 2-foot-6 in stature, in spirit Mrs. Tomaini is remembered as a
giant - a matriarch who helped shape this tiny hamlet into an off-season
haven for circus workers.

While crisscrossing the United States on the sideshow circuit, she met Al
Tomaini, who stood 8-foot-4 and wore a size 22 shoe. They married and
worked the shows together as ``The World's Strangest Couple.''
Through it all, Mrs. Tomaini never saw her disability as a stumbling
block.

"Only if I meet a person who is morally, spiritually and physically
perfect will I ever hang my head in shame,'' she said.

from James Taylor (excerpt of an unpublished essay, "How I Spent My Carny Vacation," 1998):

I'd been interviewing Jeanie Tomaini in the bait house of her Giant's Campground for nigh onto three hours. About 2/3 of the way through, Jeanie's daughter, Judy, came in and turned the lengthy interview into an even longer exercise in my self inflicted trial to keep from wetting myself right there in front of them. After all, I didn't want to break the flow (sorry) of their stories, and I felt that any attempt at even slowing them down would be like stuffing a plug into the oracle hole at a showman's version of Delphi.

But finally I couldn't stand it any more. As I'd tried to do on any number of occasions prior, I told Jeanie and Judy I'd have to stop and make water. It was that or blow up in front of them both. Judy just laughed. Jeanie wrinkled up a little grin and in her little-girl's voice, the one that always sounds so amazing coming from a lady just turned 80, asked me the question I should've seen coming. "Why don't you just cross your legs?" If that hadn't come from a woman who had been born without any, I suppose it wouldn't have been such an amazingly wry question.

Jeanie Tomaini, you see, once the wife of 8'4" giant Al Tomaini, was known in her day as the "World's Only Living Half Girl." Together, she and Al toured for decades as the "World's Strangest Married Couple" with circus sideshows and played dime museums in the likes of Atlantic City and Coney Island, as well as owning and running their own sideshows in assorted carnivals. Her parent's had her performing in pumpkin fairs (as the small-time, local events would be called) from the time she was an infant. Her parents weren't wealthy, after all, and Bernice - Jeanie's birth name - meant decent income for them all, herself included. And she did love to perform. Hand stands. Cartwheels. Climbing ladder's upside down. Ask Jeanie now what it was like, and she'll tell you without a moment's thought. "I had a ball."

(1998)