The Roanoke Times

The high life

Photos and sounds from the circus

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For the Lemoines, performing death-defying acts is the family business.

By EMI KOJIMA
THE ROANOKE TIMES
Oct. 6, 2002

LEBANON, Pa. -- This is Day 18 on the road.

Michele Lemoine, clad in a glittery pink costume, sits in a trailer with her two poodles and an orange Chow Chow and smokes a cigarette. She is trying to soak up the air conditioning before she goes outside to climb a tower and slide down an inclined cable, hanging only by a loop around her neck.

The slide doesn't bother her. It's the climb up the 45-foot tower that she hates. Especially in the late summer heat.

Her brother Henry's booming voice trails in:
"Gather 'round, gather 'round, ladies and gentlemen, to see the Lemoines' Daring High Acts and Thrill Show. Featuring the Slide for Life, the Giant Space Wheel of Thrills and Motorcycle Madness!"

Michele pets the Chow Chow.

At 46, she never thought she'd be doing the act again.

She performed daring high wire acts for 25 years with her family, driving from their Roanoke home to entertain audiences across the country. But that ended a few years ago when her father, who was her partner in the acts, retired.

Michele took a regular job. She has spent the past three years working at the Roanoke Target store without letting on to co-workers that she used to make her living doing high wire acts around the world.

But today she is at a 4H fair near Amish country, amid the livestock and carnival rides, taking time off from Target to perform the acts she has practiced in the back yard of the family home.

Henry, 37, pokes his head into the trailer.

"Five minutes," he says. Then he announces the show:
�Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Lebanon Area Fair. We are the eighth generation of the Lemoine Family, a family of daredevils and high wire acts..."

"Things we can do, others can't," Henry says in an interview. "We're entertainers, aerialists, and we have the largest cables in the business, the nicest equipment, the nicest motorcycles."

The Lemoines don't use nets under the Motorcycle Madness act or the Giant Space Wheel of Thrills, which is also known as the Wheel of Death.

Resembling a people-sized hamster wheel, it's at the end of a revolving spoke that's affixed to a tower. Michele mounts the wheel at ground level and walks inside it and then outside it as it rises to the height of a three-story building and comes back around to the ground.

During a mall performance in Macon, Ga., the wheel rose so high that spiders fell from the ceiling onto Michele and Cina, Henry's wife, who used to do the act with her.

At the fair in Pennsylvania, people drift into the bleachers while Henry looks at the sky, wondering if the thick heat will bring rain.

He watches Michele climb the tower, hook herself to the cable and slide gracefully to the ground.

Cina used to do the cable slide and partner with Henry on Motorcycle Madness. Michele paired with Henry's 70-year-old father, John, on a second cycle, and Michele and Cina did the wheel together. When John retired in 1996, Michele got her job at the Roanoke Target store and gave up life on the road.

That changed when Cina announced she was pregnant. Henry had already booked the family for the regional fair in Pennsylvania at the end of July. High wire acts were out of the question for Cina with their baby (who would be born in early August). Henry asked Michele to step in. After Michele does the slide, she and Henry quickly change for the motorcycle act. The living room of the trailer doubles as the dressing room. Henry and Michele wear matching outfits that Cina and Michele have made over the years.

The Lemoines don't believe in lucky charms, but Michele always puts her right foot into her tights first when getting dressed to perform. If she forgets and starts with the left side, she'll take off the tights and start over.

The Harley Davidson's wheels are attached to the cable so it won't fall off. A trapeze hangs from the cycle. Michele takes a seat on it while Henry climbs a ladder and mounts the motorcycle.

With Michele sitting still beneath the cycle, he revs the engine and rides up the inclined cable to the top of the tower, then descends toward the ground.

And then the rain comes down. The audience abandons the bleachers and runs for cover in nearby tents. Henry, Michele and John quickly cover the motorcycle with a tarp.
They get paid rain or shine.

John sits at a covered card table outside the trailer during the rain. Even though he never wanted his children to be performers, he says, he's proud of them.

When he was 3 or 4 years old, John's parents held him while they walked a high wire to get him used to heights. When his daughter was less than a year old, John drove her to the top of the tower on the motorcycle. He remembers Michele saying, �Oh, I'm afraid. This is too high.�

He set up a low cable for the children to play on in the back yard but advised them to stay in school and get stable jobs. Still, when Michele was about 17, she approached him with her younger sister Renee to tell him they wanted to perform. Henry, the youngest, would follow in their footsteps.

John gave in, although he wouldn't allow them to walk the high wire. He considered it too dangerous, even though he'd done it all his life. In the trailer's living room is a framed photo of John walking the high wire over a waterfall in Paterson, N.J. He keeps a letter from the mayor commending him for the show and a citation proclaiming Sept. 23, 1994, as Lemoine Family Day.

John taught his children two rules. Always try to catch yourself on the cable if you fall. And never let go.

The fourth of 11 children, John said he had no choice but to go into the family business.

"You name it," he says, "I was a young guy and had to do everything. I had to do the flying trapeze, high wire, European clowning, the bar-to-bar high act."

The family performed in Nazi Germany, although John's father had to regularly report to the Gestapo because he was French. They performed even while John's father's family was sent to the concentration camps because his grandmother was half Roma, John says. The Roma also are known as gypsies, but the Lemoines consider "gypsy" a derogatory term. Along with the Jews, the Roma were targeted for extermination.

When the war ended, John learned to fix abandoned motorcycles and added them to the acts. He traveled around Europe, entertaining and making friends. Among those friends were American soldiers who helped his family escape from East Berlin shortly after the war, John says.

He met his wife, Dorit, when he looked down from a high wire and saw her in the audience in Dusseldorf, Germany.

In 1964, John and his family immigrated to America. They moved to Roanoke County in 1976 because it reminded Dorit of the German mountains and was within driving distance of the places where they performed -- New York, Chicago and Florida. The family also worked at the old Lakeside Amusement Park in Salem.

From 45 feet, the 50 spectators are tiny, blending in with the rides and tents at the fair.

Henry feels Michele's weight under him on the trapezeswing as he rides the Harley-Davison backward down from the tower.

He steadies the bike by spreading his arms while Michele leans back into the air and lowers herself until she's hanging by her ankles. The audience applauds.

While working on props for this act 11 years ago at the Ohio State Fairgrounds, Henry fell 45 feet to the ground and broke the bones in his feet. He had to relearn how to handle the motorcycle and keep his balance. His father crushed the bones in his feet the same way, years earlier in France, when a high wire broke.

The Lemoines don't express a lot of emotion during or after the shows. Michele says she sometimes performs the dangerous acts almost automatically because it's a job.

The audience watches them, faces upturned from the bleachers. Kids stare wide-eyed. Teenagers try to figure out tricks behind the act. Parents caution, Don't try this at home.

"That's not something you see every day," says Dave Sattazahn. He's being sarcastic. Because he's running the pony rides, he sees it three times a day.

Betty Sauder, 56, a spectator from Ephratas, Pa., simply says, "I'm too old to learn that.�

Most of the fairgoers live near Lebanon. Some of them come every year to the fair and remember the Lemoines from previous appearances.

An off-key rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner" overshadows the Lemoines' music. It introduces the other fair entertainment -- the rodeo, the tractor pull. The Lemoines ignore it and continue with their show.

Henry and Michele ride backward down the cable, then back to the top of the tower. Michele shifts her weight to one side of the trapeze, causing the motorcycle to tilt. It drops under the cable, placing Henry upside down and swinging Michele above him on the trapeze. They revolve like that four times. Oohs and aahs come from the audience.

They steady themselves. Henry does a headstand on the bike and it zooms down the cable.

The audience claps, hesitantly, as though not quite sure whether the show is over.

One sunny Saturday before the Lebanon engagement, Michele mounts the Giant Space Wheel of Thrills in the family's back yard after five years without performing. The wheel swings above the house, then to the ground. Cina, Henry and John yell commands at her in German and English.

When Michele descends, John hugs her.

"I've never worked the wheel, but I can feel like my daughter and my daughter-in-law up there," he says. "If they're up there, it's like I'm up there. If there's a mistake, I feel it here."

He pats his chest.

"I'm like the old hen," he says. "I like to be there."