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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla .– Carla Wallenda, a member of the high-profile group “The Flying Wallendas” and the last surviving child of the famous troupe’s founder, has died at the age of 85.
Her son, Rick Wallenda, said on social media that she died Saturday in Sarasota, Florida, of natural causes. She was the daughter of Karl Wallenda, who had founded the troupe in Germany before moving to the United States in 1928 with great success. She was the aunt of outfielder Nik Wallenda.
Carla Wallenda was born on February 13, 1936 and appeared in a news item in 1939 as she was learning to walk the wire, with her father and mother, Mati, looking. But she said her first time on the wire was much earlier.
“They actually carried me through the wire when I was 6 weeks old,” she said in a 2017 interview with a Sarasota TV station. “My dad rode a bike and my mom sat on his shoulders, holding me and introducing me to the audience.
She spent her younger years traveling the country as her father’s troupe performed in the Ringling Bros. Circus. She had a brother, Mario, and a sister, Jenny – all played in the act.
She started appearing on the family show in 1947, but not early on, according to her bio on the family’s website. In 1951, her father told her that she could join the high-flying act if she could make a pear tree atop the pyramid of seven family members. She was able to join the high-wire act later that year.
Carla Wallenda left the family act in 1961 to form her own troupe. The following season, two of the Wallendas were killed in an accident while running the pyramid. His brother was paralyzed.
Wallenda joined the family troupe in 1965, replacing an aunt who died solo.
Her husband, Richard Guzman, died in 1972 when he fell from 60 feet during a performance in West Virginia. His father died in 1978, falling while walking over a wire in a street in Puerto Rico.
Still, she wouldn’t be deterred from performing.
“Accidents can happen anywhere,” she told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 2014. “I have to make a living and it’s the only way I know or want. waitress job and hated every minute of it Why should I go and do a job I hate?
She worked during her 70s, including in a music video for Miley Cyrus. She finally retired in 2017 at the age of 81 after appearing on a Steve Harvey special, doing a handstand atop an 80-foot swinging pole.
“When I’m there all of my pain and everything that goes and I’m in a world of my own,” she said in the 2017 TV interview.
She is survived by her son, two daughters, Rietta Wallenda Jordan and Valerie Wallenda, and 16 grandchildren. A second son, Mario, died in 1993.
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