Saturday, November 05, 2016

#14 Kelly Miller

"Nena", "Viola" and "Brittney".

7 comments:

Bob Swaney said...

Big John Strong's Nena, right?

Roger Smith said...

Elephant experts will have to confirm if this is Big John's Nena. His winterquarters was next door to us at Jungleland, and I can verify that Nena was there from the mid-to-late 1960s. If this is the same Nena, she's really getting on by now.

Bob Swaney said...

I remember one time calling Big John in Yucaipa and Gudrun answered. She said Big John was outside rounding up Nena who had gotten away!

Roger Smith said...

I've told this one long ago here, but since Nena is up again... Elmer Morgan "Chuck" Hayes was on the Strong show, then in quarters. Chuck and I returned from a long night at the Tiger Room bar in the late Rice Paddy restaurant. As Chuck got out, I missed the road trying to back out. I wound up backing over Big John's prized heliotropes, ending up in his bar ditch with my headlights beaming straight up. Chuck laughed so hard he collapsed, and it was almost an hour before he could get Nena in harness to come pull me out. The next day, Big John was in the Jungleland office demanding I be run out of town, and insisting my next check be claimed to restore his heliotropes. I stayed on and kept my check, but "The Man With More Friends Than Santa Claus" never spoke to me again.

JC Hall said...

I am pretty sure Tracey is one of the ladies Viola and Nena I don't think are in this photo although they sure have been on the show in the past

cindy herriott wells said...

that is lisa, tracy and not sure of the other

Bill Schreiber said...

That is not Brittany in that photo -- she was an African and was on the show in 1988 when I was. I cannot recognize for certain if that is Neena in the photo or not. As to Roger Smith's question about Neena, last year when we attended the big World Wide Circus Summit up in Massachusetts in 2015, Barbara Byrd was there and Chris and I directly asked her about Neena. She replied that she had died earlier in the year in spite of efforts by the show's veterinarian to save her. She lost condition and eventually died. She would have been about 47 years old at the time of her passing.