“I flew high above the audience in a big arena and performed a trick called the double cutaway to the catcher’.  Most of us have been to seminars and corporate meetings where, as an ice breaker, they ask you to tell everyone something they’d never guess about you. That is my standard answer. No one else can top it, and often they don’t believe it. Afterall, now I walk with a cane due to my Multiple Sclerosis. I move like a woman thirty years older. In no way do I resemble someone who was once a flying acrobat. Now to how it all began.

“I’m in the circus now. Maybe when you get to be my age, you can be too,” Dottie boasted. “It takes a lot of practice.”

I was six years old when my cousin told me that. I wanted to be in the circus too!! I quickly went to ask my mom. I was scared she would say no, but I looked up to Dottie. Mom sat me down and explained that we lived in a circus town. She told me the history of the circus in Peru.

She said in 1884, a stable owner named Benjamin E. Wallace – purchased tents, costumes, exotic animals, and other inventory of bankrupt circuses. He launched one of his own. The Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, grew to become America’s second-largest circus behind only Ringling Bros. Even after he died, his winter quarters in Peru continued to shelter the animals and equipment of other traveling circuses, including Ringling Bros., until 1938. Three years later Ringling sold the property and disposed of the remaining circus wagons by torching them. It was a sad day for our town, but Peru wasn’t ready to fold its big top. Efforts to revive the community’s dormant heritage led to Peru’s first circus festival in 1959 and our amateur youth circus was born. Wallace’s old winter quarters, a National Historic Landmark, is now our museum, the International Circus Hall of Fame.

Mom told me that my cousin, Dottie’s dad, my Uncle Don had been in the circus when he was a boy, and Dottie had been in it for a couple of years. But it was what she said next that changed my life. She told me if I wanted to be in the circus, I could. Of course, I said YES! And so it started…10 years of devoting five months of my time each year, including every summer, to the Peru Amateur Circus.

My first couple of years I was in Double Swinging Ladders. I was so fortunate to be trained by Tom and Betty Hodgini. The couple came from a long line of performers going back 350 years. They performed as aerialists for 27 years before retiring to Peru, and they were instrumental in how the Peru Amateur Circus got its beginning. Swinging Ladders was by no means an easy act, the ladders swung six feet in the air while the performers did tricks, including hanging upside down by one foot. I was terrified of that trick. Just a week before final cuts, Betty came to me and said, “If you can’t do that trick, you won’t make the act. You have natural talent, and you must overcome your fear.” The next day at practice I asked to be in the first group to go up--I wanted to conquer that trick. And guess what – I did it, and I made the act!

I loved being in the circus. It was like a big family. Right away I was in awe of the trapeze acts. I asked my mom to get me a trapeze to practice on at home, like the ones they had at the circus building. On my birthday that year, Dottie’s dad brought me a REAL trapeze that he had made. He made a lot of the trapezes for the circus, and I was lucky to have him as my uncle. Once that trapeze was hung on the tree in our front yard, that was where I spent all my time when I wasn’t at circus practice. Mom even put an old mattress underneath it in case I fell.

The next year I tried out for Side-by-Side Trapeze, doing tricks with a partner on a low bar, as well as the ropes on the trapeze. The act was trained by Willi Wilno. This legend, known professionally as “The Great Wilno, Human Projectile” was once blasted from a cannon over the top of a giant Ferris wheel at the 1936 New York World’s Fair. After retiring to Peru, Wilno provided expert tutelage to budding aerialists like me in the youth circus. So I was working with the best in the business.

When I was ten, I was in Balancing Bike. The driver would ride around in a circle as the performers mounted the bike and did tricks. Because I’d become fearless, mine was to stand on his shoulders. I was also in Adagio, where I climbed all over my partner doing flips off him, wrap arounds, shoulder stands, and lifts. I even got to go on road shows and performed on “Bozo’s Circus.” What kid doesn’t dream about that? As much as I loved all these acts, I had my eye on something bigger…and higher.

I wanted to try out for Low Casting. It’s a lower version of High Flying. Performers swing out on a trapeze, go into a trick, and they are caught by a catcher. I’d been practicing at home – swinging out and letting go, landing on my mattress. I was ready to take that step.

That summer I turned twelve, I experienced many changes. I saw death close-up for the first time ever when my grandpa died. I was also going through my father’s fight with alcoholism and the problems it caused our family. We were moving out of the house where my trapeze was since my parents were getting a divorce. I had to change schools too and make new friends. Now the circus and my family there had become something more for me--it was an escape and a refuge. I couldn’t ride my bike to the circus building since we’d moved farther away. So, in the morning on her way to work, mom would drop me off there. I would spend hours there each day practicing. I passionately believe the circus gave me something to focus on when I felt like my world was falling apart.

That summer I made Low Casting, I thought it was the best thing that could happen to me -  I was a flyer! That year and the next I was in Low Casting, Balancing Bike, and Swinging Ladders. One of the most exciting things to me was that all three acts were performed in the center ring. During those two years I overcame so much. Being a part of the circus gave me confidence and a sense of self-worth.

The next summer at age 13, I became a member of the “Flying Freebirds” Trapeze act – the act that closed every show and was the dream of every young child in the circus. My first year in the act, my idol – a girl named Bo – was attempting a double somersault with a full twist. She had not caught it in practice, but our coach wanted her to keep trying. We performed ten shows in seven days. Every show for all ten shows she’d get three chances to catch the trick. It was so nerve wracking for all of us each time she’d miss. The ringmaster would ask the audience if they’d like to see her try again to an astounding YES! On her third attempt at the final show, she and the catcher grabbed hands and everyone in the arena exploded into cheers and applause. It is one of the most exciting moments in my entire life to this day.

I flew for three years. It was arduous work, and we practiced every night for three hours. My last year in flying, we were practicing a trick called “Passing Leap.” The catcher caught me by my legs and as he turned me to go back to the trapeze, my partner did a somersault over me and grabbed the catcher as he released me to the bar. Just two weeks before the shows were to open, my partner came out of his somersault early and kicked me in the back, sending me hurtling toward the ground. I missed the net, and a spotter under the net caught the top half of my body. My heels hit the cement, crushing bones in both heels. The spotter and I both bruised our tailbones, but she saved my life. I still performed in the shows that year, but I didn’t do the “Passing Leap” again.

That was my tenth year in the circus, and I was sixteen. Suddenly other things demanded my attention – my boyfriend, my car, my job at Dairy Queen, my friends, and school activities. I’d missed cheerleading camp the year before for circus. I wanted to have that new experience, so I left the circus that summer. I took so many friendships and memories with me. I’m not sure I’d have survived those 10 years without the circus.

Finding out I had Multiple Sclerosis seven years ago made me all the more grateful that I’d been able to perform in the circus. Learning to be fearless, strong, and resilient then, made it easier for me to use those traits in handling my disease.

So if you have children and you ever live where there’s a chance – let your children join the circus! All three of my children were in the circus, and now two of my grandchildren. There aren’t too many who ever have that experience. And when they’re older and someone asks them something no one would ever guess about them, they can say they were in the circus and might be able to say, like their Nana can, “I was a flyer in flying trapeze!”