FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida – Carla Wallenda, a member of the band “The Flying Wallendas” and the last surviving daughter of the founder of the famous troupe, died at the age of 85.
Her son, Rick Wallenda, said on social media that she died on Saturday in Sarasota, Florida, of natural causes. She was the daughter of Karl Wallenda, who founded the troupe in Germany before moving to the United States in 1928, to great acclaim. She was the aunt of trapeze artist Nik Wallenda.
Carla Wallenda was born on February 13, 1936 and appeared on a newscast in 1939 while learning to walk the tightrope, with her father and mother, Mati, watching. But she said that her first time listening was much earlier.
“In fact, they carried me by the wire when I was 6 weeks old,” she said in a 2017 interview with a Sarasota TV station. “My father rode a bicycle and my mother sat on his shoulders, holding me and introducing me to the public.”
She spent her youth traveling the country while her father’s troupe performed at the Ringling Bros. circus. She had a brother, Mario, and a sister, Jenny – all of whom acted on the spot.
She started appearing on the family program in 1947, but not on a tightrope at first, according to her biography on the family’s website. In 1951, her father told her that she could join the tightrope act if she could make a head stop at the top of the pyramid of seven people in the family. She was able to join the barbed wire group later that year.
Carla Wallenda left the family show in 1961 to form her own troupe. In the following season, two of the Wallendas died in an accident during the execution of the pyramid. His brother was paralyzed.
Wallenda returned to the family troupe in 1965, replacing an aunt who died doing a solo act.
Her husband, Richard Guzman, died in 1972 when he fell from 18 meters during a performance in West Virginia. Her father died in 1978, falling while crossing a wire street in Puerto Rico.
Still, she would not be prevented from performing.
“Accidents can happen anywhere,” she told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 2014. “I have to make a living and this is the only way I know or want to. I’ve worked as a waitress and hated every minute of it. Why should I go and do a job I hate? “
She worked during her 70s, including a music video for Miley Cyrus. She finally retired in 2017, at the age of 81, after appearing on a Steve Harvey TV special, making a head stop at the top of a 24-meter mast.
“When I’m out there, all my pain and all that goes away and I’m in a world of my own,” she said in a 2017 TV interview.
She leaves her son, two daughters, Rietta Wallenda Jordan and Valerie Wallenda, and 16 grandchildren. A second son, Mario, died in 1993.