Michael Wiziarde and Jennifer Yourd

00:09 My name is Jennifer yard. I'm 34 years old. Today is August 1st 2013. We are at the Chicago Cultural Center and I am interviewing my dad.

00:24 And I'm Michael was already. I'm 66 years old. It's August 1st 2013. We are in Chicago and I'm having a conversation with my daughter Jennifer.

00:39 Okay. So today we're going to talk a little bit about our family's history of the circus that was started by my great-great-grandparents. I would have been your great-grandpa my great-grandparents. So when to start from the beginning Dad and tell us just for a background drop back a generation to your great-grandparents great-great-grandparents. Robert was already came here from alsace-lorraine in France, and it was born in 1861.

01:21 Immigrated here at a young age and in fact his records that indicate he was in Brooklyn New York by 1863 or 4. So I have area.

01:32 Had a tremendous interest in the Arts and must have had formal training extensive formal training. I think in New York because he like many young men in the 1880s migrated West and settled in St. Joseph Missouri. Also live in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri. So he left New York and migrated West after what I believe was pretty extensive training because then the record becomes an intriguing one of an artist in Kansas City really trying to make a living from his art.

02:07 And he did that in a lot of different ways. He was a Pianist. He was a vocal music teacher. He wrote sheet music for several different names. Whatever was already and then Rolex was a r o w i x was a pen name and he even had some pieces done and it was called oat rahbar, which wittingly of course is Robert go backwards, so he did extensive work in the 1880s in Kansas City in writing and Publishing music. He was a vocal music teacher. He said there's a piece and hear about him leading a 2000 Voice Choir in Kansas City.

02:56 Singing a piece that he wrote called Columbia my country which I still have the sheet music for and I always thought boy. Would that be fun to hear that played one stand on and it was referenced in it in a piece in a review of the work that he did. So he was a very active Artisan. I don't think particularly successful one in the innocence of making money at it. But I always felt a special connection to Robert because when I was so 13, maybe I found one of his books and an antique book store in Rockton, Illinois, you know, I was just sort of leaving through the years and there was a book called 12 bells and other towns sketches Robert always already in that and I was maybe 13 and there was even a clipping inside there in the old yellowed newspaper clipping that have been taped in their regarding his death because this book was published in 18.

03:56 99 and Robert died in 1900. So he was only 39 is very young and he left behind to get married in St. In St. Joseph Lucien Swearingen, and he married her in 1884.

04:13 They had three boys and this is where your great-grandfather comes and don't play they in turn had three boys. You can tell Roberts influence our interest in the Arts because his first boy named Victor Hugo after a Les Miserables is a very famous almost institutionally famous author in front. So I have an uncle Vic who was named after Victor Hugo great-uncle. The second boy was your grandfather your great-grandfather who was Jack Oliver his middle name taken from Robert and there was actually a third boy born in 1891 Clarence. So there are these three boys. There is Robert trying to make a living for himself and his family as an artist and I'm not sure the particularly successful but prolific and and by that, I mean I have extensive list of the p.

05:13 What is that you wrote for a magazine called Boston ideas that he submitted pieces to for many years as well as his book The Tall belts book that I found but his primary work really was in a music and the sheet music that he wrote. I have the not only the the national anthem piece that they did but in for the birthright the national anthem right there was some sort of contest or competition and it says that this piece that he wrote which is called Columbia. My country was quotes submitted in consideration of the national anthem was already in national anthem, but apparently there was some sort of contract, so he did all those things and it's fun to the extent that his work is still in to some extent preserved in can be found the the two books that you wrote many of his articles his sheet music and then of course the

06:12 Reports on things like the vocal groups and so on that he ran into so in a sense we were talking about the the circus and circus really begins in an interesting the circus history or Saga Begins in an interesting kind of way because your grandfather Jack first appears in the story as a program boy jealous theater in Kansas City, which was a Vaudeville house. Now, this is he's eight years old and this is prior to his dad dying, but you can see the boys were out working and you worked as a program boy at the gillioz theater used to tell us know. Yeah, I used to run errands and between after the program's you not run errands for the stars and he talked about how he had to go out and buy booze for Wallace Beery internet people of a certain generational remember that name all this. But it was that sort of thing.

07:10 And how did he get started in the circus while after his dad passed away in 1919 hundred Jack Grandpa was only 10.

07:19 And he continued to work at the gillioz theater, but eventually he took up with the Vaudeville shows that came through that theater and the one that is that is very touching to me is there's this marvelous photograph of Grandpa on a donkey dressed as a clown. He's 13 his left home and he's with the Elson dog and pony show which should come through the Gillis Vaudeville house and he he literally left home. He was 13 and he took up initially with the Olsen dog and pony show and then it's just terrific because Grandpa spent the next 30 Years in the circus and the circus is that he was in and the people that he was with I think they for

08:08 An interesting story

08:15 Just as a clown as a little clown Nelson dog and pony show when he was done. When his dad died. Okay, and I I really don't know very much about what became of Ellen all I know she didn't die until 1948 and I did know a little bit my uncle Victor Hugo has a young man.

08:44 So he played from from that beginning in.

08:51 When he was 13 1903 from that beginning he played continuously in Vaudeville houses and circuses for virtually the next 30 Years culminating in of course, he and Grandma owning their own circus at about the worst time that you could possibly want to own a circus. They started in 1929 stock market. So did he eat was he formally educated or did he pretty much go?

09:20 No, I don't. I I'm sure you went to elementary school. I doubt seriously while I'm positive you didn't be on that because we live in the circus from 13 and he kept growing his skills. He started out as a little clown but by the time I'm going to Leap Forward, he replayed a number of circuses and and I actually have

09:44 Specific reference excuse me in 1906 to 1908. He played with the Johnny Robinson circus and then in 1909. He was with Hagan back and Wallace started in 03 and by 1909 six years later hanging back and Wallace was a middle-sized circus that John Ringling owned and it traveled the country. They were railroad circuses and there were wagon circuses and hagenbeck Wallace was I think at that time or wagon circus?

10:19 And here's what I think things really good fun. So he's touring he's literally been touring since he was thirteen. He's now 19 years old in the hagenbeck Wallace circus pulls into the little town Westmoreland, Kansas Lil Dusty Dry Town West of Kansas City and there in 1909. He meets Laura Lou Baldwin and by November 1st 1909. They were married and it wouldn't be coincidental that that was at the end of the circus season at the end of the touring season later to the circus or a picture of your grandpa and white face with a little hat one of the clown outfits and on the back of it in Grandma's handwriting is this is the way Jack looked the first time I saw it and that was because he was with the hagenbeck and Wallace and they were in Westmoreland.

11:18 You have to think however romance like that would begin to find out if she was going to be right intrical part of the circus.

11:33 So they were married. They were married in Westmoreland, Grandpa and Grandma rather came from a large and confusing family and Westmoreland their grandfathered married three times had children by all of them. So there's this real collection of half-brothers and aunts and uncles and so on that she was Baldwin for father and the photography studio in Westmoreland, and he died at a young age of esophageal cancer when Grandma herself was only 10 years old. So here's these two young people meet in Westmoreland. Grandpa lost his dad earlier and grandmas father had passed away. And in fact her mother had remarried and that's why there's another round of confusing relatives and another child Royal through that Grandma had

12:23 5 Brothers and a sister. And so that's why there's a fairly extensive family and remains an expensive family in that area.

12:33 So they get married in 1909 and grandpa is between circuses. See these were contract players. So you are aware the surface for more than a year and then they would see if you re up where you went to look for another circus and at this point in American history in 1908 1909 1910. There were a lot of circuses they were they were traveling circuses of all sizes and all over and eat this area was playing midsize circuses.

13:04 He took her to Kansas City after they got married they rented a place and they rented a practice room in a convention hall. He set up his wire act by the time he was doing the wire running and it was about a 7-foot wire and they would do runs and leaps and jumps and they even had a little clown number that they would do across the wire and he got Lou he got Lou practicing the join the circus is a wire Runner nineteen-year-old right after their marriage. So they're in Kansas City November. They're working on their new black grandma.

13:44 Fell off the wire broke her leg and they're in the very first year and what crap I had to go out that spring to the start the circus season and we left without grandma and did his own act for quite a while until she cut recovered and when she recovered she joined him on the road and their first in their very first year

14:06 She's pretty brave. I think after falling off the highway or once and breaking my leg. I'm not sure that I would continue with that child in fall down. You took a buster and they had an attitude about that of well. Yeah, he just took a buster and it really didn't matter whether there's a bone sticking out of your leg will be fine and Nate. That's the way they're kind of acted. They accepted it as a part of being a knees are tremendous acrobats really in the last analysis. They evolved into it very accomplished gymnast in acrobat and the pictures of them doing these acts are in Fairly incredible in some ways, but that all evolved from that from that Growing Up by 1910 two years later. They have billing in the Ringling Brothers are the rest of the Barnum & Bailey. It wasn't Ringling Brothers that they had billing and Barnum & Bailey show as there was already Duo trapeze runners.

15:06 Walkers in that was Grandma and Grandpa. I mean hi wire not travel east high wire Runners and Walkers are so for several years. They did that with that show as they traveled when they weren't doing circuses, which primarily summer activity. They would play Vaudeville houses across the United States and they would have a 7-foot high wire and they would do their and clown act on their acrobatic act across the wire. So that's how they grew up in a sense together doing that all the grandpa been in it considerably longer.

15:48 So that was how they got started and then a picture a new picture emerges just took a year later and it's all of a sudden it was already Trio with another it was a young man. There's nothing well, they didn't have a baby that turned into being 12 that quick write. His name was Buck. We're and buck bucks parents have been killed in a circus fire and Grandma and Grandpa adopted him and he was the part of the body do all become those already Trio and he was a wire Walker too and they develop some other acts as well. Like a perch act the perch Act is

16:29 Where you at? That big long pole up in the air someone up on top of it would be doing acrobatics and Below had to hold it is extremely difficult and dangerous act. There were projects where people were killed in the circus who had the perch act data running wire act and it was those already Trio which at that time was Grandma and buck and and Jack and that's the contract act that they had.

16:55 It wasn't until 1916 been married seven years by then until they had their own first boy, which was Frank.

17:06 And it interests in your grandma's father was Frank. Okay, Uncle Frank. Your great-uncle was their first child born in 1916 in the circus and he was literally raised in the circus Frank has some quotes about touring from one end of the country to the other through the Vaudeville houses in those days. There were so many vodka houses. He said we could play a different one every night and that's literally what they did was cost to cross the country with if they were contracted with the circus. That's where they weren't they weren't they were doing their Vaudeville act and they contracted with up placement agency that was called the Schulman Run by George Hughes and Coleman was a big circus placement agency, which is where they get there if they get their jobs.

17:59 So

18:02 So did they have a permanent home at all at that time or where they pretty much just living on the road. They developed a permanent home. It came over a. Of time at Grandma and Grandpa were on the road a lot and we're actually a reasonably successful act and they had the wherewithal they actually made Westmoreland where they had met and they wintered in Westmoreland, Kansas, which I'm not sure if your first choice for wintering some place your home and they built a house there. They built a practice barn and Union when I was a boy, I could drive down to Westmoreland and see was already novelty circus on the practice of the practice burn that we've seen is still that they just recently refurbished and I want to talk about that in just a minute because

19:02 That they did start their own circus and that's when that practice but in the earlier days, of course, they were traveling for other shows this contract players. So Frank was born in 1922 as a six-year-old. He was running the low wire in the Vaudeville houses and then

19:23 Buck actually became involved in RKO radio and he had some the still came back and work sometimes with my grandparents, but he was also on the radio and I have this marvelous picture because I don't really know what became a buck was but I have this marvelous picture of a little baby on a zebra skin and it says Rosella Buck's daughter. So, you know, he must have been married and had children at least it was already Trio isn't either of the boys that they had.

20:01 Children, they had Frank in 1916. And as well, as you would with circuses he was in the ACT almost as soon as he could walk and then my dad your grandfather came along in 1922 Dvorak the Vaudeville houses and actually is there was a transition there because by the time my dad came along Vaudeville was starting to dry up Bible was getting hurt by a radio while girl is getting hurt by early movies and the work that they had available to them in Vaudeville wasn't as much and accordingly as they went that by the time my dad was 7 years old.

20:54 They agreed contract playing and there weren't that many jobs available and he picked the darndest time, but he founded that are started that was already novelty circus. There were 10 of them are was Grandpa and buck grandma. And then the two boys Frank and Jack people that work for them at different tax. And so they started in 1929 the was already novelty circus headquartered out of Westmoreland with the practice Barn that we've talked about and I had a list of their acts. I didn't want to say this about that through all of this all of this development of circus and stuff for all the years that I knew my grandfather and my father would verify this to this much was true. He love the circus or my dad hated it and viewed it as

21:54 Nothing, but a difficult sort of impoverished work and talked about it. And I know you questions now see he's eight or nine years old and it's 1930 during the Depression when it things are and so he always Associated the circus who is just hard work and poverty and injury grandpa on the other hand. You can see it and he's probably pointing at his was already know the Circus Circus wagons with his hat and its whole cast is lined up there, but he was really proud of it and and it took a lot of energy to keep a show like that going, you know, they worked continually and what about Frank? I mean he as I'm sure we'll get into obviously went into more of a career as related to the circus. Did he have that same passion that his father had I think that's interesting Frank much more was the Schulman and always was

22:54 As those boys grew up Frank who is obviously 6 years older as those boys grew up Frank continued in all kinds of ways in the show business field. He was in the special services during the war and armed services that entertained the troops. They had a regular act and he was a part of that. He was also on the radio as a radio announcer. He was doing man in the street interviews in this is in the thirties and then as as you probably remember he became the first TV clown in Canton Kansas City TV in 1952 with all the clown older they grew up on with all the cops in Chicago. It would have been Bozo in Kansas City. It was Anne Frank was on TV star.

23:54 Did that program in 1952? It's interesting in those days the national networks just ran at night from 6 p.m. On or so and daytime television was up to the locals to develop and Frank had gotten a job after he came out of the service with the radio which led to the TV which led to his other clown. He did wizzo the clown on three different TV stations over 30 years, Kansas City, Kansas City and Topeka. He did all these

24:30 All like shopping mall openings and skid stuff up until four months before Frank died. He was in the 71. He was still doing was over there. That's a lifetime from the time. He was 6 in the circus and until 4 months before he died. He still had on his his constant kind of left all that behind and transition into a much more. I guess you'd say mainstream kind of career. So it's just interesting how many men part of that maybe age if I think Frank saw them the better side when Bago is still active and actually Grandma and Grandpa were doing pretty well. I obviously put enough money together doesn't start their own barn and stuff. So that that part was fine. But then by the time my dad's there, it's the heart of the depression and he talked bitterly about having to pick cotton in Georgia to get enough.

25:30 Money to get the family back to Westmoreland. You really he was very seldom talked about the circus and it was because he didn't have any good feelings about it except for

25:41 Is dogs Bad Trick dogs in the woods Rd novelty circus and there's as the ACT continue to Noah Grandma and Grandpa any merged and started this circus that you have to recognize by this time. They're in their mid-forties 250. I'm sure the axe getting harder Taco Bell that way. I mean, he really what where there's photographs of him on a trapeze and his claim to fame in a sense. It made him notable what he could balance on the back two legs of a chair on a trapeze in that don't have pictures of it more over which is what I really remember so clearly and this is early 50s Grandpa could sit at the dining room table and he would go back on those two back legs of the chair and you would barely see his feet move and he would just sit there like that and grandma would say always just showing off from his oldach, but he

26:41 By this time, you know his Signet 60s. Yeah, and you can just an incredible sense of balance. And with most of that was self-taught, right? They didn't have like trainers or teachers. They they they were generous about people in the circus showing the way for other people about that and that's Grandpa got to know people he grew from that the clown and eventually it was trapeze and wire and the perch Act and the rolling Globe were all parts of their act and then of course they had the dogs and dog act. Dad Pete the highest diving dog in the world.

27:21 Little white dog that my dad loved you talk about him. He said all you had to do is say Pete and Pete would go up the ladder walk off the end of it and they had a big nut pattern that down there. They catch him in. That was the big things. I picked up along the way. I guess did you have various pictures of them with their various animals that came along with the show? So that's how those boys grew up but I think in very different experiences and Frank, I think Frank of loved what he did. He did his whole life and it was became actually fairly famous and at least regionally in Kansas city is and everyone knew Frank was already there. So was Grandpa

28:13 Up until what age was he be part of the was already circus was it all the way until he was like 18 or well, there was already circus came to an abrupt halt in 1936. Okay, so they lasted 7 years but and I've read quotes from some of the people that were involved describing 1936 as the worst of it meaning. Nobody had any money and they were just getting by in these I've talked about that. They were sometimes when they couldn't get home get back to Westmoreland from wherever they were touring for lack of money. So they went back in and really the circus was done after that Frank and my dad probably did some more contract work, but by World War II they were both in the service prank was in the special services entertaining troops and Dad dad's running joke was when they asked me and they drafted me what I did in civilian life I said

29:12 Was a flyer meaning an aerialist and they put me in the Air Force if I was at that time the Army Air Corps and so very different directions. Dad went in World War. He was a tail gunner in the bombers in the Philippines and New Guinea and was shot down in the bomber during the war of the pilot and several others were killed and he in the back of the plane and several of the Gunners got out in the raft and were rescued by New Guinea natives for fortunately friendly nudist is there were unfriendly ones as well. And so he survived the war with that. He was wounded by shrapnel in his back from that crash.

29:59 But he survived the war and saw his discharge papers amongst my papers is military discharge papers the other day and I found this amazing when he was discharged from the Army. He was six foot tall same as I am you weigh 240 lb typhus being shot down a purple heart and a couple of other metals. They had very different works. And in that sense very different life experiences after it because Frank pursued the the TV and and was successful at it really that it is whole lot and dad with considerable bitterness toward both the circus in and all of that generation that he didn't talk too much about the circus me in talk anything about

31:00 They just didn't.

31:02 And and he didn't even like me to bring up the fact I can remember cuz my dad became a businessman and he became ultimately successful businessman and he didn't like me to talk about that.

31:17 He didn't like me to talk about the circus. Like I said his associations with it weren't they were too much of related to poverty in and he just hated it and he didn't see that in the background that will that was one thing I was wondering when thinking about this was do you remember when he first told you about his childhood, you know, it seems like it would be such a unexpected especially seeing as how he evolved does an adult into a very different person from you know, the circus lifestyle, but when he was that's an excellent question and when he was young

31:58 And these are my earliest memories I'm dying. I'm probably three or four years old. He would if we begged him to show off for us and what I mean by that is he can do remarkable things still dead. Stop still stand on the floor and backflip and landed every time and by this time, you know, he was well into his hers 23.4 maybe but and then I remember one party distinctly where we had friends over and I'm just sitting there in amazement watching as he walks up the stairs of our house on his hands. Wow. Yeah, that's how I feel.

32:41 And yeah, so that's those are the earliest memories of Dad in the circus. Is it on occasion? He would show off there's a wonderful photograph of him in the military in the Philippines doing a full flip in front of they caught him in mid-air and I don't know a bunch of troops. So he was doing some of his circus acrobatics. So that's the fence where I first knew about it and then the other way that I learned about the circus which is the coolest part in a sense in the part I want to relate to is my early experiences with my grandma with Grandma Lou. Is he after the war they left Westmoreland and move to Lincoln, Nebraska?

33:25 And that's where I was born. That's where my dad met my mother. That's where our whole generation started was in Lincoln. But Grandma and Grandpa to move to Lincoln in 1941, and they they worked at Capitol Beach which was up Park and it had the ferris wheel and the roller coaster in the big Rolling Barrel and all of that and they had what was called mile-a-minute Photoshop at Capitol Beach and all those places in Hugo said you get those said strip of photographs. That's what they did to Capitol Beach on the weekends and evenings and Grandpa worked at the S&H Green Stamps during the day that was in the fifties was done by then, but my earliest memories of a grandmother so magical to me as her trunks. She had her circus trunks in the basement and my brother and I just thought it was marvelous to go down in this basement and she'd go through and show us all her beat.

34:25 Outfits that they hansode to be John and the and the clown feed and the clown outfits there was one drunk that just had rigging in it wire rigging and they still had all that stuff in their basement when I was a little boy and I just thought it was marvellous to go down there and she was magic to me. She took me to the circus. I probably was no more than four or five and knew everybody she been out of this circus for 10 or 15 years, but she took his cell in love volume unencumbered. We walked around the back dokkan alley or they're all getting dressed up. She introduced me that are famous famous in that are not so much. Now people that I either met through her like Clyde Beatty and was a lion tamer Emmett Kelly a very famous clown. I have a wonderful picture of her with a Buffalo Bill the Buffalo Bill had that wild west show and I don't think they were ever in it, but somehow

35:25 New Buffalo Bill and Billy Burke should talk about Billy Burke was in the Ziegfeld Follies. Actually. She wanted to being Flo Ziegfeld wife for a while. But the reason you would know that name honey. She was Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz. In a sense. Was it that Lou and jack for all the other issues and problems of that here. They were vibrant Lively people. They love the circus. I thought it was magical to go to Capitol Beach cuz you got to ride all the rides for your grandparents are there and so there is just all those all those amazing experiences with her especially going behind the big top and doing the Trunks and that's the interesting piece now, I think is it fortunately

36:21 What I consider to be those Treasures of those drunk and the pictures that I hold of the old circus and so on have been preserved and that old practice Barn in Westmoreland. Kansas was moved by the good citizens of the Historical Society relocated repainted reinforced and all of those trunks with all those marvelous circus pieces in a bar now enough a little Museum in Westmoreland Kansas called it was already novelty Circus Museum and I have yet to be there that's on my bucket list. I want to go out to Westmoreland.

37:01 Grandma's buried there Ian Morris and the Baldwins a number of family members are in the West Moreland Cemetery. But if I think it would just be marvelous to once again see those trunks that I called around and when I was 5 years old in and all that stuff is still there. So I'm so glad that that's been preserved and it has a hole done that and just all the I think me and the books that you've put together for us and very your grandchildren with all the pictures from the circus. I mean, it's a such a unique history that our family has and it's nice to have all of it documented and preserved that's important to preserve the memories and it is a unique story and I don't think it should be lost in that sense. And I and I just think I was at I was lucky enough to be at their 50th wedding anniversary is on December 1st 1959.

38:01 Pictures of it that they're married November 1st of 1909 a month, they waited for a month. I don't know why but Heather 50th Anniversary, there are Steve and I we lived in Illinois and live in Nebraska. So we came back my brother and I my parents Frank his wife get his daughter Michelle and then all these other people that came to the house for their 50th Anniversary, including people that they have been in the circus with and people that they had known in Westmoreland our whole lives cuz they were well-established there in Westmoreland, you know, they even owns a little Bakery and Restaurant there for a while. So the 50th Anniversary sticks out in my mind cuz all those folks were there and it was the culmination of that was a pretty remarkable 50-year Journey if you think about it through to the circus and all

38:53 And so I always remember that my Grandpa died about three years later and he was 72 grandma live for another 15 years and 88 or something when she died. So that was a long life, but it was I think a very interesting one her eyes from the Robert coming here to all the things that happened with him to Jack and Lou in the store and that story to their sons, which gave rise to us Mexican size to you.

39:28 Such a great story and I'm so happy that we had the chance to.

39:34 Talk about this and now document it and as I sit here with my dad talking about my grandpa and my great grandpa and my great great grandpa. I thought this would also be an opportune time to tell you you're going to be a grandpa again.

39:51 This is a free alarm for good time. Oh, oh my goodness. I'm so excited in March family in our history and here comes this next generation. And that's what we want to do. Right is reserved those memories and raise those people good people.

40:29 Self-love. Thank you for doing this Dad. This really means a lot to me you came up with this idea called me about it, and I'll never forget your thoughtfulness. Thank you, dear. And congratulations.