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LocalMotion - Your Town, Your News, Your Views! July 2010 • Volume 10, Issue 129
Wallingford Flower & Gift Shoppe
190 Center Street. 203.265.1514
An Elephant's Buried In Wallingford. What???!!!
Miss India as a baby in 1940 I was on the phone chatting with my good friend Kathy Marotta on June 8th. We were talking about a number of things, and she was reminiscing about her brother Paulie returning from Okinawa, Japan. After his return, there were a few problems in the family home, so his mother basically kicked him out. (He did come home again after a few weeks.) One day Kathy was outside watching the circus come down her street and she saw her brother following behind. She was shouting to him across the street, "Paulie, come home." Okay, that's kind of interesting about her brother, but I said, "What? A circus came to Wallingford?" "Oh, yeah," she replied. "They passed right by our house on East Street. We'd all be outside yelling, 'Here come Barnum & Bailey! Here comes Barnum & Bailey!'" I said, "WHAT? A circus came by your house?" I've been living in Wallingford since 1982, and somehow this fact has never crossed my path. I was intrigued. "Oh, yeah, the elephants were all dressed up in their costumes and the performers were all marching down to where the tents were set up, where the Wallingford Airport used to be." She described the elephants as being docile and yet spectacular, extravagant and proud. Before I had a chance to say much more, Kathy then nonchalantly said, "You know, there's an elephant buried in Wallingford." "WHAT???" "Yeah, an elephant died here and was buried near the Electric Division." I was dumbfounded. This information piqued my curiosity, and I had to find out more about it. My first stop was at the Wallingford Public Library and their Connecticut Room. They had a tiny folder called "Circus" with very little information, but it was enough to get
me started. I searched many websites, wrote to museums, and contacted the Wallingford Historical Society, but there is scant information available. I'm going to tell you the story in a minute, but one gentleman, Jerome Jacobson, spotted a post of mine on a circus site and wrote to me privately. He supplied me with the only photos I was able to locate, so I am grateful for his kind assistance. He is a former clown, by the way. Her name was Miss India. She was the species known as Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), and she came from India. I don't know when, however. I do know she was with the Bud E. Anderson Circus in 1940. Sometime after that she was purchased by the Polack Brothers Circus, and in 1950 she was sold to the Mills Brothers Circus. It turns out a lot of different circuses came to Wallingford every year, but on Sunday, June 28, 1953, the Mills Brothers came to town. (Kathy was born in May of that year, so of course she doesn't remember this..) As The Morning Record indicated in the paper on Monday, June 29th, "The Mills Brothers Circus, sponsored by the Wallingford Lions Club, rolled into town yesterday and hundreds of local children and adults thronged the grounds for a pre-performance glimpse. There were elephants and trained dogs, ponies and white horses, special acts and monkeys, a big top and several smaller tops. There were goats and a camel, and all the colorful caravan that goes with the show." The article indicated there would be an afternoon and evening show that day, which helped me clarify a couple of things that were reported incorrectly in an article dated June 30, 1980. Continued on Page 3