Rene Kirby, who skied, canoed, won gymnastics competitions, remodeled houses and danced with Gwyneth Paltrow in a 2001 Farrelly brothers movie — despite having no use of his legs due to spina bifida — has died. He was 70.
Kirby had been hospitalized for two months with infections as well as problems with his esophagus, kidneys and bladder, his brother Jon Kirby said on Monday. Rene Kirby, whose name was pronounced “Reen,” died at the University of Vermont Medical Center on July 11.
Rene was born with more than a foot of his lower spine missing. His spine was detached from his pelvis, his legs never developed, and he couldn’t bend his knees, according to Jon. “He was L-shaped and really couldn’t lay flat,” he said.
The gregarious Burlington man became a fixture around town, maneuvering his three-wheeled bike with a hand crank. He walked and skied on his hands.
In a 2008 episode of “Stuck in Vermont,” he told Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger that, as a young person, he couldn’t tolerate handicapped people who pitied themselves. “Life’s too short to be doing that,” he said. He called himself “a gimp without a wimp.”
“Walking on my hands is just all I’ve ever known,” he told Sollberger. “I’ve never thought of myself as disabled.”
Walking through Burlington’s Red Square bar on a summer night in 1999, Rene literally bumped into Hollywood director Peter Farrelly, who was in town shooting Me, Myself and Irene, starring Jim Carrey. Farrelly bought him a beer. The two talked and, by the end of the night, Farrelly had decided to cast Rene in his next film. “He’s got a zest for life that is contagious and he’s extremely funny,” Farrelly told Sally Pollak for a 2001 Burlington Free Press article. “He grasps the world and runs with it.”
Farrelly wrote a part for Rene in Shallow Hal, a comedy Farrelly and his brother, Bobby, cowrote and codirected. The film is about looking beyond physical appearances. Rene “epitomizes inner beauty so it made sense to put him in it,” Farrelly said. Besides dancing with Paltrow, on crutches, Rene, then 46, had lines with Jack Black and Jason Alexander.
The movie theme notwithstanding, Rene had a handsome face and a muscular upper body. In photo of three of the Kirby brothers as young men, it’s easy to pick out Rene, Jon said: “His shoulders are much bigger and his arms are much bigger than mine and my brother’s.”
Rene told Sollberger he had a 48-inch chest, 28-inch waist and 20-inch inseam. His chiseled jaw and boyish shock of hair led one “Stuck in Vermont” viewer to note his resemblance to Superman‘s Clark Kent.
His spin through Hollywood also included a role in the 2003 film Stuck on You. He appeared in one episode of the TV show “Carnivále.”
Rene was the second of Don and Janet Kirby’s seven children. His parents rejected doctors’ recommendations to use instruments to stretch Rene’s legs. Rather than put him in a brace when he was 9 months old, his mother propped him up with pillows and set his bottle just out of reach. He learned to get it, and he was walking on his hands by the time he was 1.
An Essex machinist built the bike for him when was 10, and he used it for the rest of his life.
He and his siblings grew up in Burlington, Essex and South Burlington. Jon, the youngest of the seven, looked up to Rene. “He just showed me that there’s no limitations on what anyone can do,” said Jon, who lived two doors away from his brother in Burlington’s Lakeside neighborhood. As Rene liked to say, “You don’t have to stand up to stand out.”
Rene won state titles in gymnastics in high school and swam across Shelburne Bay as a young man. He and Jon remodeled several houses together. They milled lumber, laid tile and hardwood floors and installed insulation. “He was just as much a carpenter as I was,” Jon said.
Rene worked for IBM for 20 years and, in recent years, enjoyed online stock trading, Jon said.
Rene survived throat cancer, his sister Cheryl St. Amour said. But treatment included removal of his larynx a few years ago, so he lost his ability to talk.
He hadn’t ridden the bike since last fall, Jon said. “He had gotten to the point where he really couldn’t get up on it anymore.”
Rene’s father died three years ago. His mother and six siblings survive him.