Word: wallenda
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There were no safety nets underneath: Karl Wallenda did not believe in them. "Gott give us the courage and gift of talent to do our acts," he once told an interviewer, "and when he be ready to take us, he will...
...Wallenda devised a more complicated form of his pyramid- seven people in three tiers, six men connected by shoulder bars and one young woman perched on top on a chair, all swaying at the edge of the void, preserved only by their incredible combination of skill, balance and courage. Old Karl billed them as "the Great Wallendas," and he did his best to keep the act in the family...
...Karl Wallenda, the patriarch, would not give up. "It is our pride," he said. "I feel better if I go up again. Down here on the ground I break all to pieces." Some of his partners were less determined. "I'm scared silly every time I go on," said Gunther Wallenda, a nephew. Karl's second wife Helen, who once performed in the act, refused even to watch it any longer. "I always sit in a back room and pray," she said. Wallenda was adamant. "The rest of life," he said, "is just time to fill in between...
...wind is my worst enemy," Wallenda once said of his outdoor performances. Last week, as he prepared to walk a wire strung 300 ft. between two beachfront hotels in San Juan, P.R., he was warned that the winds blowing in off the sea were tricky. There was a steady breeze of 12 m.p.h., but with gusts up to 23 m.p.h...
...Karl Wallenda was 73 by now, but still strong, hard-muscled, his eyes a bright blue, his gray hair tufted around his ears. He had said he would make the walk, and so he would. There were 200 people watching. Among them was his granddaughter Rietta, 17, the only relative then performing...