A Harrowing Day At The Circus

To the Editor,

The Clyde Beatty-Cole Circus opened and closed in Danbury without incident. For the first and last time I attended this circus’ performance in Forest Park, Queens, on July 10, 1995. We had been to the big extravaganza of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey at Madison Square Garden where everything was overdone and glitzy. But this circus was the real old-fashion kind. It opened with a wonderful parade, including Uncle Sam on tall stilts and I imagined I was transported back in time to the early 1900s. I made a mental note to make the Clyde Beatty-Cole Circus an annual event.

It was getting close to the end of the show and my toddler had totally lost interest in the ongoing circus. I moved with her to the rear of the tent, where she wouldn’t disturb others as she ran up and down the temporary stairs. My two boys remained quietly in their seventh row center seats.

An announcement came over the loudspeaker. The only words I could understand were “please control your children” so I picked Lisa up out of the aisle. When I straightened from lifting her, I saw the elephants were lumbering in.

As they were lining up in the center ring, one elephant bumped into another.

That elephant pushed the other one back. The female circus performer who was standing in front of these two giants turned to look over her shoulder with a look of sheer terror on her face. A male animal trainer rushed over, his face also registering terror. I knew at this point that this was no ordinary event. Something was very wrong.

The two elephants began fighting and coming toward the crowd. The only thing between them and the audience were 31/2  foot high temporary metal poles spaced about two feet apart and flimsy, low fence. No way would these barriers contain the elephants when they reached them.

I have no way of knowing what happened next in the ring, because a sea of humanity had risen up and was heading toward me. In a flash, the crowd was upon me. They were climbing right over the wooden rows of chairs that were connected together in groups of three, knocking them down like dominos as they came. As the group first reached me, I knew I had no choice but to outrun them. The panic-stricken mob would have gone right over us to get out.

Ahead of the panicking crowd, I was the first one to reach the top of the steps. There seemed no place left to go. The only thing separating me from a 20 foot drop down to the cement parking lot below was plastic orange construction netting.

I turned to face the crowd and screamed to the woman who had been directly behind me, “You’re crushing my baby!” Maybe the crowd in back of her would have kept pushing her into me, but she herself would have tried to stop. But at that point, the crowd wasn’t made of humans. The woman was looking past me for a way out. The whites of her eyes were those of a panicking horse caught in a fire. She just kept coming. My mind flashed to those that perished in the Happy Land fire. Even if you personally didn’t panic, you wouldn’t stand a chance if you couldn’t escape the crowd.

I was able to reach a back row of seats that were still standing in the opposite direction of an exit. As I stepped into it, the crowd surged past me. Then a terrifying thought crossed my mind. Where are my sons?

I looked and there was my five year-old, all alone in the empty seats looking bewildered. My nine year-old was gone. The tent in my section was totally empty except for us. Then Luke came back in from the exit the crowd had just rushed out of.

He told me that when an elephant hit a tent pole, he got frightened and ran. His arm got caught in a woman’s pocketbook and she dragged him out the exit. When I kissed him, I could smell cologne on him. That’s how close around him the crowd was. When I asked him why he didn’t take his 5 year-old brother with him, Luke honestly replied, “At that point, it was every man for himself.”

I looked at Tommy who receives physical therapy for delayed motor skills. He would never have been able to keep up with the crowd. He would have been trampled.

The stairs that Lisa had been playing on, not 30 seconds before, were filled with stampeding people. There’s no way she would have survived. The only injury that any of us sustained was a bruise on the top of my foot that I got when I turned to face the crowd at the top of the stairs, and a black and blue on my elbow which was the shape and size of a thumbprint. I don’t know how I got it. I guess someone grabbed me to pull himself up.

I could have been thrown off the back of the tent if it weren’t for an empty seat in the right place. This may sound corny to some people, but I am convinced God was watching over myself and my children that afternoon.

It came out in subsequent news stories that these two elephants had fought before and went through the window of a Sears store. And two people were killed in two other incidences by these same elephants. After Forest Park, both elephants were removed from the circus (to breed, no less!), but I feel Clyde Beatty-Cole was negligent in leaving them in and next to each other after the Sears incident.

It was the panicking crowd, not the elephants, that sent 12 people to the hospital that day. But it did cause me to ponder whether elephants, which have always been one of my favorite acts, belong in a circus. There is no way circus personnel can control them.

Large animals do not belong in a circus. And perhaps, as some believe, no animal does.

Lois Barber

33 Zoar Road, Sandy Hook                                         June 19, 2000