Word: wallendas
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...four generations Germany's acrobatic Flying Wallendas have been performing their spine-tingling act on the high wire, always without a net. Since the Wallenda family settled in the U.S. in the 1920s, four members have toppled to death, and a fifth was permanently paralyzed in a fall. Now Steve Wallenda, 17, the youngest male of the proud family, who could have revitalized the troupe, has called it quits -for a high flying career with the U.S. paratroops. "I just like heights-on our first jump we will be jumping from 1,200 ft.," said Steve. "The highest...
Died. Yetta Wallenda, 42, German-born acrobat and member of the ill-starred Flying Wallendas; of injuries suffered when she apparently fainted at the climax of her solo act atop a swaying fiber glass pole, fell gracefully and silently 50 ft. to the ground; in Omaha. Last year, when a fall killed two other members of the troupe and permanently crippled a third, Yetta said: "When I fall, I want to be dead...
Pulling himself up out of his wheelchair and hobbling down the hospital corridor on crutches, Mario Wallenda, 22, whose legs were paralyzed in a 35-ft. fall from the high wire at the Shrine Circus in Detroit eight months ago, announced that he would leave for Sarasota, Fla., to join his father, the head of the famous Flying Wallendas troupe. Two other members of the troupe were killed in the accident, but Mario has kept his nerve. "I am a circus man," he said, "and I want to get back into it even if I have to ride the high...
Four weeks after the 35-ft. fall that killed two other members of the high wire's famed Flying Wallendas (TIME, Feb. 9), Survivor Mario Wallenda, 22, had recovered sufficiently to undergo two-and-a-half hours of surgery on his shattered spine. "His prognosis for life," announced the Highland Park (Mich.) General Hospital, "is good, but he is a paraplegic, and his chances of walking normally again are hopeless...
...Three men crashed to the ground and lay sickeningly still. The other three men caught the girl and clung to the wire, holding her by her wrists until an improvised net was spread out below. Of the three who fell, two were killed, including Dieter Schepp. The third, Mario Wallenda, had a fractured skull and was not expected to live...