From Bill Powell

jumping wolf 1958, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. Buckles, how is this for a sendoff and final bow. Hot off the presses from the Wall Street Journal: GEE GEE ENGESSER (1926 - 2008) A 'Blond Bombshell' of the Circus Was Comfortable Among Predators By STEPHEN MILLER August 23, 2008; Page A7 Billed as "The Blond Bombshell of the Circus World" for her flowing tresses and brassy persona, Gee Gee Engesser coached a coterie of ibexes, taught a sled dog to walk a tightrope and raised a baby elephant from infancy as a member of the family. Bill Powell The tiny tusker, also named Gee Gee, stalked the family's home, thrust her trunk through the window to the breakfast nook and chirped for handouts. "It was like a 7,000-pound dog," recalls Ms. Engesser's son, Bill Powell, who is now a vice president of Feld Entertainment Inc., owner of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. If Ms. Engesser seemed comfortable disporting with predators and giant ungulates, it was in part because she had grown up beside them. Born Georgedda Zellmar Engesser, she was the daughter of circus folk. Her father, a Minnesota vaudevillian, began operating a circus shortly after acquiring an elephant. During the Depression, he operated a motorized circus, Shell Bros., with 45 trucks hauling acrobats, animals, clowns and the big top along rural highways. The biggest circuses traveled between cities by rail. Archival footage shows Gee Gee as a toddler dandled in the trunk of a big elephant. In 1945, she joined the large Cole Bros. Circus as an equestrienne. Her act involved holding the reins of 16 palominos hitched in eight ranks of two each, while standing atop the rear two and galloping around the big top at breakneck speed. The circus's press materials described her as "the suicidal Roman standing driver." In the 1950s, she trained "Gee Gee's Alaskans," a team of dogs that were half malamute (sled dog) and half wolf. She once told an interviewer that her biggest problem was keeping the dogs from massacring each other at night. Clad in furs and coming on stage mushing a sled, she toured with the act in circuses and stadium shows for nearly two decades. After divorcing her first husband, tightwire artist Billy Powell, in the mid-1960s, she was remarried to Robert "Bucky" Steele, an elephant trainer. Together they acquired six elephants, as well as a menagerie of ponies, big cats and black bears. They toured as an animal act with several large circuses during the 1970s. Gee Gee also wrangled several of their elephants, disguised with yak hair as mastodons, for the 1981 film "Quest for Fire." When the two divorced in the mid-1980s, determining custody of the elephants "made for an interesting day in court," her son says. Ms. Engesser retired to the Tampa, Fla., area and devoted herself to raising money for animal and circus charities. She died July 15 at age 81. "Mom was sterner with her family than with her animals," says Bill Powell. He remembers how each evening she would head for the barn for nightcaps with the elephants. "She'd give them a beer and talk to them. It was a beautiful relationship." • Email remembrances@wsj.com Bill Powell Vice President Feld Entertainment Event Marketing and Sales South/Mexico visit us on the web: www.feldentertainment.com www.ringling.com www.elephantcenter.com www.disneyonice.com www.disneylive.com