"Nutty Jack," the Human Fly

“Nutty Jack”

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

November 18th, 2019

 

Thirty-one stories above Seattle, with bare fingers wedged into cracks and crevices, “Nutty” Jack Williams was clinging to a building.
With a ledge 6 feet above him, he crouched for a moment on a concrete windowsill, judging the distance and catching his breath. From out of the window, a hand gave him a towel and Jack wiped the sweat from his palms.

Harry C, Gardiner, Human Fly

Then, his muscles tightened and he shot upward, his arms outstretched, grasping for the ledge. A thousand voices gasped in horror as his body swung back and forth until it suddenly went horizontal and bounced upward, landing safely on the ledge.
Teasing the crowd, he stood up, pretending to be dizzy. He wavered, pushed his jersey into his trousers, adjusted his black slouch hat, then wiggled his toes in his comfortable “sneaks” and began to climb again.

Harry C. Gardiner, Human Fly

On the 42nd floor, his head was just below a cornice jutting 5 feet out. He coiled his body then catapulted upward and outward. With one last swing, he was up and safe and lying breathless on the roof.
Seven ladies fainted, heads turned away in fear, and others just froze in disbelief.
“Nutty” Jack Williams, who claimed to have “climbed everything in the world with a smooth face on it,” including the well-shaven faces of his skeptics, was a well-known “Human Fly,” and one of the best in the country.
He had carried a bathing beauty on his back to the top of the Waldorf Hotel in California. He had climbed the Washington Monument, countless state capitol domes, and the 63-story Woolworth building in New York City, the tallest building in the world.

John Jammie Reynolds, Human Fly

Jack’s career began in Cleveland as a teen member of an acrobatic troupe. He said he had saved a young girl trapped in a skyscraper after fire department ladders couldn’t reach her. He used bare hands to climb up and bring her down.
In December 1918, he left Seattle heading for Medford, planning to climb the tallest building in the Rogue Valley, the five-story Hotel Medford (the sixth story wasn’t added until 1925).
For a man who had been at the “top of the world,” the buildings of Southern Oregon offered him little difficulty, but because the railroad ran through Medford and the town had offered some traveling money and a free place to stay overnight, Jack couldn’t pass it up.
Jack’s moneymaking routine was the same as all the other “human flys.” Find a town with a worthwhile cause and agree to split any money he made — 70% for Jack and 30% for the cause.
It was an easy climb to the top of the Hotel until he reached the large cornice at the top. The crowd briefly booed when he asked for a rope, but began to cheer again when he made it to the roof and climbed to the top of the flagpole.
He put $19.82 in his pocket, gave $8.50 to the local Red Cross, and left town for good.
Jack Williams disappeared from newspapers around 1925, and his fate still is unknown. Some say he fell to his death in Tennessee, others say he changed to wing walking on airplanes.
 

John Jammie Reynolds, Human Fly

Swallowed up by the Great Depression, traveling daredevils were about to disappear. It was just too dangerous and not enough money in the world to take that kind of risk.
Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.