Saying goodbye to Ringling Bros. circus in Columbia: ‘This is a piece of America’

Princa Wright and Beverly Riley hadn’t thought much about the circus coming to Columbia.

Both had attended before. Wright remembers bringing her daughter, now 45, when she was a child.

“It’s been a long time,” Wright said.

Riley, too, recalled trips as a child. “There used to be so much going on, everywhere you looked.”

For many of today’s adults, attending the circus as children decades ago, before the days of travel and the web, brought the world to small towns. It gave them chance to see the amazing feats of performers, as well as a chance to see exotic animals in person, before it was easy to visit a zoo.

Wright and Riley didn’t plan to attend the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Thursday, when it opened its four-day run at the Colonial Life Arena.

But then, on Jan. 14, the circus announced that after 146 years it would be folding up its big top permanently after its current shows end in May.

“When I heard this was the last one,” Wright said, “the more I thought about it the more determined I was to be here.”

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Her friend agreed.

“It really is sad,” Riley said. “This is a piece of America.”

But for Allean Butler, who came from Sumter with a friend, it was her first time. “I just wanted to see the circus.”

Her friend, lifelong circus fan Angela Rivers,wanted to bring her grandson to Thursday’s opening night, but he couldn’t come.

“So tonight,” she said, “we’re big kids.”

There were several big kids at Colonial Life Arena Thursday, as the hawkers selling programs outside kept yelling, “The final farewell edition of the circus, never to return again.”

Some, like Cedric and Jamelle Kirkman, wanted to make sure their children experienced the circus one more time – or in the case of 6-year-old Gavin Kirkman, one time.

“I grew up coming to the circus,” Cedric Kirkman said. Even before he won tickets from a local radio station, he planned to bring his family from Sumter.

Each of his children had their own reasons to be excited about seeing the circus.

For Gabrielle, 14, it was the tigers.

For Olivia, 11, it was the acrobats.

For Gavin? The clowns.

For mom?

“I just like spending time with my family,” Jamelle Kirkman said. “It’s good family time.”

This year’s circus is the first without the elephants. The new show being performed here this weekend, “Out of this World,” is promoted as a “cosmic voyage with wonders of gravity-defying acrobats, orbital aerialists, majestic animals, fearless daredevils and humorous clowns.”

As Trudie Harris stood surrounded by snow cones, cotton candy, stuffed toys, gadgets that flickered and other trinkets just inside the Colonial Life Arena, she reflected on how different the circus is now compared to when she attended as a child.

“Even the smells and the food has changed,” she said. “There used to be more sawdust back them,” she added with a laugh.

Vini and Krista Clark brought their nearly 3-year old son, Aiden. They hope he remembers this visit – but if not, they will.

“We were thinking about coming, but once we found out it was the last one we were like, ‘Ok, we have to go’,” Krista Clark said.

One of Vini Clark’s favorite circus memories as a child were motorcycle antics, probably very different than the “space bikes” that seemed to defy gravity as the rode around a spherical cage. He made sure Aiden had a souvenir motorcycle.

Currently, Ringling Bros. has two shows touring, “Out of this World” and “Circus Extreme.”

“Out of this World,” the show at Colonial Life Arena until Sunday, has 12 more stops on this tour until the show closes on May 21.

“Circus Extreme” will be performed in Greenville Feb. 2-5. The final show on that tour is May 7.

Last year, circus fans had to say goodbye to the beloved elephants that were a hallmark of the circus, when Ringling Bros. retired them.

This year, it’s goodbye to everything else.

This story was originally published January 26, 2017 at 9:25 PM.