Tears water our growth.

Manning

continued from page 2 genealogy and teaching the proper way to preserve and clean gravestones in our local cemeteries.”

Members of Manning’s family assisted her with also placing headstones on several graves of her own ancestors in which the stones could no longer be read or only a minor marker indicated the burial of a family member and the family had a nicer headstone to replace it.

“She devoted countless hours to digitizing documents, even as her health was declining,” Kinnun said. “Shirley loved to visit the residents of Polk and Montgomery counties, collecting their stories.”

In addition to her Mountain Signal magazine and 20-plus books, she also provided historical articles in the Polk County Pioneers newsletter and the Polk County Genealogy Society newsletter.

Kinnun asked Brenda Cunningham, NSDAR’s recording secretary, to unveil the award sitting atop a table before the audience. The award came framed with a certificate and a medal, which her children, Trey Cannon and Angela Smith, placed on the wall of the library.

Cannon said, “Mom has been doing this kind of stuff as long as I can remember. We appreciate and thank you guys.”

Kinnun mentioned that Manning had told her genealogy friend Roberta Moller that she had been doing genealogy for 34 years.

Smith, understandably a bit choked up and teary-eyed, said, “We appreciate all the time that mom spent with y’all.”

Kinnun said to them. “She was appreciated by more than just family.”

Manning was not a member of

DAR, but she helped a number of their chapter members to trace and prove their descent from a Revolutionary War patriot.

Manning, Born Oct. 23, 1944, was one of five children born to Marvin and Dora Shewmake. She also had 12 half-brothers and sisters, and five stepbrothers and stepsisters, for a total of 22 children.

Kinnun joked, “Shirley probably needed all of her genealogy skills to keep track of all of them.”

She and two of her younger brothers, Bobby and Wayne, spent many of their formative years in an orphanage, attending the Caddo Valley Academy (CVA) in Norman. The CVA, was operated by the Presbyterian Church after privatizing the public school for first-12th grades. Manning attended CVA from 1954-1961. Their stay at the school was rough going, to say the least.

Kinnun said the award would be mounted permanently, as close as possible to the genealogy room where Manning spent so many hours. It is currently mounted to the left of the door. Former NSDAR chapter regent Cortez Copher pre- sented Manning’s children with a photo she had framed to also be mounted on the wall. The photo was taken during a DAR headstone cleaning workshop.

Copher has known Manning since they were children. Manning assisted her in tracing her family tree, spending nearly four years to prove Copher ancestry to relatives from the Revolutionary War that would allow her to apply for DAR membership.

Copher was quoted as saying, “I will always remember how fast Shirley would try to teach me genealogy research methods and how slow I was at learning, forcing her to slow down and repeat everything.”

Kinnun commented that slowing down for others was probably something Manning encountered a lot. Many in the group agreed.

“The Polk County Genealogical Society flourished for many years with Shirley at the helm,” Kinnun said, “but was not able to survive without her. The Society passed away when she did. Nobody has done more to preserve our local history here in Polk and Montgomery counties than Shirley Manning did; or believed so passionately that it was important to do so. For all these reasons, we believe Shirley Manning did more than enough to earn such a prestigious award.”

Historian and former history teacher Harold Coogan said, “She did a great job.” He worked alongside Manning many times.

Another friend, Ron Himes, spoke about how closely he and his wife became friends with Shirley and her husband Joe. He said, “Shirley… was so remarkable. She was brilliant, feisty, a little bit stubborn,” which garnered some laughs and nodding of heads, “in a good way. She had a heart of gold. My wife Karen and I spent a lot of time with her in the short amount of time that we knew her and Joe. I just can’t say enough about both of them.”

Manning died Aug. 24, 2022, after complications from a stroke June 26, 2022. Her husband of 21 years, Joe Henry Manning, who was constantly on her mind, especially after his death on Feb. 14, 2022, was very handy with construction and tools. He assisted her considerably with her projects, and she assisted him with his.

Smith said, “This has been my hardest year ever to lose them both. Mom’s passion… was one of those things that never turned off. She was always thinking about it. She was always talking about it. I know that the community has lost so much by all that wasn’t in her computer and was just up in her head. It makes us wish we had written more of it down. She’s missed greatly and we do appreciate the award for her, because we think she was awesome.”

Circus

continued from page 1

“If we do get busy, we do allow standing room as well. If people have medical needs — wheelchairs, walkers, that kind of things, we will make space for those as well.”

There is only a single ring, and not the three rings that once was a staple of the industry and a cliché that appears in most every book or movie. In a way, it surely helps to draw the focus of the audience to a singular point.

Like many of the circus crew and performers, everyone chips in and wear many hats to either help get the big top up, or running the electricity, setting up booths, etc. The Circus had arrived the morning of March 20, and began setting up the tent starting around 8 a.m. with temperatures hovering around freezing. By the time they were finished, with a short break in between, It was noon.

Acton said, “In the circus, we don’t really believe in the concept of ‘Not my job.’ If something needs to get done and you’re able to help, you step in and you help.”

Ring stock

The days of using elephants in many circuses is part of a bygone era, like the three rings. The massive pachyderms were use at one time to help raise the big tops of the circuses that could afford an elephant. The C&M Circus uses man and woman power, as well as Bobcat power. No, not the predatory feline, but the versatile machine. A bucket has a pair of hitches that chains, steel cables or thick lines are attached to as the operator either pulls or sometimes pushes the several metal poles up as people lift the smaller poles on the outer rim to extend and expand the tent. Come alongs, and block and tackles are also used.

“It’s a lot easier to steer and a lot cheaper to feed,” Acton said of the Bobcat versus an elephant. “Culpepper and Merriweather Great Combined Circus has been around since about 1984. We’ve had a lot of different formats of our show as it has grown over the years. We did have elephants with our production for quite a long time.”

The elephants were eventually retired and not replaced. It does make it logistically easier to travel without transporting elephants.

The show also has three big cats, all of them rescues.

“Our two tigers are 19 years old,” Acton said. “The brother of the pair, Solomon, is semi-retired, but Delilah still very much enjoys performing. It’s a good interaction and enrichment for her.”

During the performance, the beautiful tiger makes her entrance and likes to roll and lounge. The big cat trainer is Eugene “Trey” Key III, who also operates the Circus. He has a buggy whip in hand, and he does use it. There’s a feathery piece on the end and he tickles Delilah’s belly with it as he tries to coax her to get to her place on the stands.

Acton said, “We have a young lion. Technically speaking, he’s still kind of a cub. He’s only two and a half years old. Lions mature at about three — three and a half.

“Our two tigers were rescued from a zoo that got shut down. Our lion, Wendell, was being raised in some people’s home as a pet. Now if that sounds like a bad idea to you, you’re right. Once he was four months old, he was too large and becoming dangerous to their household. He was already close to 80 pounds, about the size of a Labrador retriever and all the energy of a kitten — wanting play, cuddle, snuggle and run all the time. A lot of fun but not very safe. We’ve had him about two years now.”

While Delilah likes treats as a reward for performing, Wendell prefers toys. On this particular evening, at the second show, Solomon did not make an appearance in the ring.

“Our tigers are actually very rare. Our tigers are a soft creamy orange color with a golden stripe. They’re called golden tabby tigers. They’re actually a crossbreed between the Siberian tiger, which is the white tiger, and a Bengal tiger, which is your typical black and orange Frosted Flakes kind of cat. Normally when tigers are crossbred, which is pretty common in zoos and zoo programs, the cubs will look like one parent or the other, whatever’s more the predominant gene. But when you do get a crossbreed like this with the features of both cats, they call the golden tabby tigers. They are exceptionally rare. Last number I heard is there is about 300 of them in existence in the whole world.”

It’s a recessive gene that causes the rare coloration, generally only found in captive tigers.

Tradition

On the midway, families have time before or after the show to buy concessions, enjoy a 30-foot-tall slide, a gorilla bounce house, face painting or kids can ride either the standard ponies, miniature ponies or the miniature donkey.

There are a pair of draft horses used for tricks by the bareback riders Loyal Family, a 10th generation family tradition. The brother-sister duo, Christian and Zefta.

Acton said, “The Loyals are very famous horse riders, doing different kinds of strength and positioning on horses while they run in the ring. It’s really quite amazing.”

It’s also humorous. Without giving away the comedy portion of the routine, let’s just say that what occurs is unexpected.

“They’re keeping something they were taught by their families and their families before them. They name all of their horses after their grandmother’s soap opera characters.”

The show must go on Key’s wife, Simone, is not only the ringmaster, but she does an impressive aerialist act.

There’s a tightrope walking act; a wheel gymnastics on a German Wheel that has one of the performers basically rubbing his head against the top of the big top as the double wheel with his partner controlling the momentum; a foot juggler who plays with fire; a woman who does a hair hang, meaning she literally does an aerial act attached to the line by her hair.

In between each act, Leo, fully dressed in his clown attire, and looking a bit like a distant cousin to The Grinch, entertains the crowd in various ways after his arrival in a car so small one would think a toddler was going to exit.

Perhaps in a way, Acton still has a bit of kid left in him. Setting up the circus and striking it afterwards is a lot of hard work, but once the lights come on and the seats are filled, Acton gets to act like a kid. He has fun as he juggles, balances various items and pulls members from the audience for some interactive participation and ring tossing.