Punch Jacobs Memorial

050308_AS_circusfuneral_056_web, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. SELAH -- A conventional funeral wouldn't have been any good -- for one thing, there's normally very little cotton candy or popcorn. And any memorial for Terrell Jacobs simply had to include cotton candy and popcorn. And a circus big top, and an animal-show ring, and displays of whip-cracking and stories told by a 94-year-old woman once billed as the world's greatest high-wire performer. Those things were all a part of who Jacobs was. He was also a son, a brother, a husband, a father and a friend. Above all, however, he was a circus man. "Circus was his love, his life," said Jacobs' wife, Sharon. "I loved it, too. I was in love with the circus as much as I was in love with him. We were a good team." That's how about 60 people -- including magicians, actors, concessionaires, animal trainers, high-wire swingers and aerialists -- ended up under a big top on a lawn outside Selah on Saturday afternoon. There was circus music, and circus food, and a whole bunch of circus people there to remember Jacobs, who died in February at 68. Nobody wore much black. Not many guests wore ties or coats or formal dresses. And all in attendance on family friend Darren Au's property found that entirely appropriate. "This is just how he would have wanted it," said longtime friend Roger Wofford of Yakima, who met Jacobs while working concessions for circuses. Jacobs never really had much of a career choice. His father, Terrell Jacobs Sr., maintains a place among the true titans of circus history for work he did as an animal trainer with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey. Legend -- and more than a few in attendance at Saturday's memorial -- has it that Jacobs Sr. once performed in a ring with 52 lions and tigers. And this was back in the first half of the 20th century, when the circus coming to town was about as big a thing as could happen. "If it was 2 in the morning and they were unloading the train, people would go down there to see the animals," recalled Helen Billetti Warburton, the 94-year-old high-wire veteran. Jacobs' mother, Dolly, was a renowned performer in her own right. So when she gave birth to twins, Judy and Terrell Jr., in 1937, there was very little question that they would grow up in the circus. "When he was 12, his father sent him to the Orient with a 12-lion, lion act," said Donn Moyer, a 75-year-old who used to perform as a fire-eater and has named a son after Terrell Jacobs Sr. "And his mother owned three elephants." So it was going to happen. But Jacobs Jr., or "Punch" as his friends called him, didn't just get thrown into the circus life and find an affinity for it, he also proved to be quite good at it. He could and did train everything from dogs to bears, from elephants to birds. And he did quite a bit of clown work, too. When he was 24, already more than a decade into his circus career, he met a perfect foil in Sharon. "On one of our first dates we went to see 'Tarzan' (at a drive-in) with a lion in the truck," she said with a laugh. "And I got my leg scratched." Punch first spotted Sharon in Toppenish in 1963, starring as a contortionist in Stan Kramien's circus -- "I could sit on my head," she recalled -- and they were married about six weeks later. "He stole my contortionist," said Kramien, who later built a career as a magician and who served as emcee of Saturday's event. "I had to go out and buy another elephant so I could compete." Punch, who had previously been based in Indiana and Minnesota, moved to Central Washington and with Sharon operated the Candyland Circus out of the Yakima Valley for nearly three decades. He already had a son, Terrell Jacobs III, and together they had three more. They raised them all in the circus, touring the Northwest with the kids in tow. Two of the four boys, Todd and John, recently decided to start up their own circus. They're going to use the same big top and ring from Saturday's memorial, which their father built himself and which has lain dormant in storage for about 20 years. The family business will live on. "In the circus, you never say, 'Goodbye,'" said Wenatchee Youth Circus owner Paul Pugh, during the memorial. "You just say 'until next time.'"