EVERYONE IS TIED TO EVERYONE

“It is not accidentally that most trapeze artists are extroverts. They are an upward and outward-looking tribe, optimistic by nature, not given to brooding on their failures or worrying unduly about the risks they are taking.” - Sam Keen

There are gaps in the history of the flyers because people who were in the group during the 1930s and 1940s are now deceased, and whatever artifacts they might have had of their participation are now lost. Whereas universities maintain archives to keep track of their histories, YMCAs usually don’t, and so much of what happened during those decades is unknown, but it is known that the group continued.

The history of the flyers begins to pick up again in the 1950s because people do remember those years, and much of that history is of the interconnection of individual stories. It does not take six degrees of separation to link these people. Usually it only takes one. For example: Not only were Julius Ginsberg, Chet Preisser and Hugh Gunnison the original flyers at the YMCA, so was Otto Pribyl. In fact, before they became the Imperial Flyers in the 1930s, they were called the Otto Pribyl Flyers. George (Yo-Yo) Moreno was one of that group. Otto continued to appear in YMCA circuses into the 1950s doing a vaudeville boxing routine and dealing with a car, which appeared to drive itself. Otto taught Davey Owens that vaudeville boxing routine. Otto owned a full sized trapeze in a lot in Lakewood where Ben Coleman, Will Howard, Iris Lucero, Bob Gray and Davey Owens flew. Ben Coleman and Davey Owens did fair dates in the summer with a trampoline act and a casting rig act.

It was Ben and Will who got Bobby Christians into trapeze. Davey Owens also had a clown act in which he ate a fish (a piece of carrot that looked like a goldfish), and juggled both on a rolly-bolly and a unicycle. He also did a back flip out of an oil drum that had a tiny trampoline rigged in the bottom. The casting rig act that Bobby and his wife Karen did was learned from Ben and Davey. Later, Gary and Vickie Baker did the same act using Bobby Christians’ casting rig. Manny Crespin was the apartment mate of Bobby Christians when they were both students at the University of Northern Colorado. They also did fair dates together. Manny Crespin was an associate trapeze instructor for Yo-Yo Moreno at the YMCA and was put in charge after Moreno’s death in 1981. Crespin continued to be in charge of the YMCA trapeze for the next fifteen years.

David Owens as Dado. c. 1955

During Jimmy Kyle’s, Yo-Yo’s and Manny’s tenure there, hundreds of Denver area high school students came through that gym including Wayne Wright, Carol Bosselman, Juan Green, Art Jiron, Don Robinson, Andy Arellano, Donna Lopez, Paul Johnson, Tony Carpenter, Vince Nicoletti, Jim Fulcher, Terry Pershing, Bruce Lonnecker, Bruce Minor, Karen Jeffries, Doug Boger, Albert Heinrick, John Quintana, Georgie DeHererra, Paul Francis, Barbara Moss, Art Guerrero, Jack Van Horn and Richard Greenwood. Jimmy Kyle, the gymnastics and swimming coach at North High School was a YMCA flyer and was coach for Tony Carpenter and Vince Nicoletti. Vince Nicoletti was an all-around gymnast for the University of Denver.

Manny Crespin in a layout. c 1961

Tony Carpenter was a still-ring gymnast for Colorado State University and flew professionally for a year with the Shrine Circus. Gymnast, Lisa Hofsess, learned to fly at the YMCA and flew professionally in an “all-girl act” in Mexico City. Another acrobat, Bob Fenner, maker of Fenner-Hamilton “Gymmaster” trampolines, was the first person known to do a borani-out fliffus. Davey Owens said the trick should be called a “Fenner.” Because he had a trampoline factory, when the YMCA needed a net, Fenner generously sewed one for them that looked like an enormous trampoline (p. 6). Eventually, because he had not been paid for the net, the net was bought and paid for by Wayne and Carol Wright even though they were on the road and no longer flew at the YMCA. It became a gift for the flyers. For Bobby Christians, Bob Fenner has made all of the of safety belts for the Club Med trapezes and also made the twisting harnesses that ice skaters use to learn twisting jumps without injury. Those were demonstrated and installed across the country by Jimmy Kyle. Everyone, it seems, is linked to everyone. Here are just a few of their stories.

“When circus was real, flying was a religion.” Burt Lancaster, in the movie Trapeze, 1956

Tony Carpenter, third from the left, as a Flying Luna