Dusty’s best friend

When Cecil B. DeMille was looking for the perfect place to film the outdoor scenes of his spectacular film, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” it was only natural that he chose Sarasota.

The grand opening scene of the film was filmed in Sarasota,” former Ringling acrobat Alvin Schwartz said. “The parade was filmed in Venice and the train wreck in Sarasota.”par

For more than 30 years Sarasota had been the home of the Greatest Show on Earth. The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Even today, the town is home to some 16 circuses that winter in the area.

But, all together, those 16 circuses do not compare with the greatest circus of them all, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus which had been brought to Sarasota originally by John and Charles Ringling in the late 1920s.

“Thank you John Ringling,” animal trainer and Ringling performance director John Herriott said before the 2003 installation ceremonies for the city’s Circus Ring of Fame on St. Armand’s Circle. “If not for him, we would all be living in some very cold place like Pennsylvania or Indiana.”par

Or even Baraboo, Wisconsin, which housed the Ringling show briefly after it left Venice and before it returned to Florida.

Herriott is now semi-retired.

Herriott said that he thought there were more circus people living in the Sarasota-Venice area now than at any time since the Ringling show first came to Sarasota.

While he said he has not seen any ghosts, he did speak about the day he revisited the old circus arena in Venice.

“The gate was open and I could see the ring barn,” he said. “It was like something out of the twilight zone.”par

After the induction ceremonies, I met dog trainer Dusty Sadler, a performer with the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus.

Though smaller than the Ringling show, it is considered the largest circus in America that is still performed in a tent. Sadler has had a dog act with the circus for more than one quarter of a century.

Like Herriott, he is happy to be living in Sarasota.

He has a house near the Sarasota Bradenton Airport, in an area where I unearthed a few stories that wound their way into this book. There is no other connection than the location.

Dusty lives in his house with his dog Bailey T and special memories of Toby, his first canine partner in the dog act.

Toby was a Cocker Spaniel with black splotches. Bailey T is nearly identical.

“Toby and I had an act together for eight years,” Dusty said. “Then Toby developed a heart condition and had to retire. She lived another eight years.”par

Dusty had her cremated and keeps the cremains in his house, in a special box.

Eventually he got another dog and decided to continue the act. That new dog was Bailey T.

“Bailey T. looks just like Toby,” Dusty said.

One day Dusty was folding napkins in the kitchen.

“There was a Teddy bear design on the napkins,” he said. “except for one napkin. Instead of the bear, it was Toby, with angel wings.”par

Right before his eyes, the design had changed. That one napkin had Toby’s face where all the others had Teddy bears.

Dusty folded that napkin very carefully. Cradling it very carefully, he put it in the box with Toby’s cremains.

As it turned out, that was simply the first Toby sighting.

“One night I was at home watching television and I heard a gurgling sound,” he continued. “I have one of those water dishes with a bottle that refills the dish.

“When I heard the gurgling sound, I looked over. There was this clear-liquid-like form of a dog. I could see its head and most of its body and it was drinking from the water dish.

Carole Lee, a Venice medium said that Dusty’s description is consistent with a certain type of spirit.

“Toby was a big water drinker. I sat there stunned, but pleased,” Dusty said.

Dusty has continued to see Toby from time to time.

A few weeks later, he was sure that he had seen Bailey T dash through the kitchen but when he went into the living room, he found Bailey T asleep in a chair.

“It’s like Toby is constantly with me,” Dusty said. “I was so close to that dog.”par

Dusty said he is convinced that Toby sent Bailey to him.

“The T in Bailey T’s name is for Toby,” he said.

Obviously Toby was a great believer in that old show business adage, “The show must go on.”par

So was Jackie St. Clair, the only living clown to have been honored at The Ring of Fame in Sarasota.

Jackie has fond memories of the cameraderie on the performers in the circus.

He grew up in the circus and especially remembers a night when he was 16 and there was a terrible storm that really shook the tent and scared the daylights out of him.

“What’ll I do, Daddy?” he cried to his father who also was a performer in the Ringling show.

“From then on, every time there was a really bad storm, everyone in the circus would cry, “What’ll I do, Daddy?”par

St. Clair said the performers were a very superstitious lot. They would not wear yellow, calling it a Jonah color, but he said they did not talk about ghosts.

“If they ever come back, I hope they come back with the money,” he said.

But if the Ringling ghosts are in Sarasota as many believe then there must be more ghosts than Toby the Cocker Spaniel.

With that thought in mind, I continued to interview circus people in search of the most elusive spirits in Sarasota — the spooks of the big top.

Retired circus performers live all around the area and when they die, they generally remain in the area. Most are laid to rest in cemeteries in Bradenton, Sarasota and Venice.

Karl Wallenda, the great wire walker, was buried in Bradenton after his fatal fall while performing in Puerto Rico on March 22, 1978.

His sister, Jennie Wallenda said that many of the great circus animals are buried on the site of the former Sarasota winter home of the circus, a -acre plot of land that is now home to the Glen Oak Estate development. It is said that in the 1940s, more than 100,000 tourists used to visit Sarasota annually just to see the winter quarters of the circus. That site does have a mystical feeling about it.

Sarasota remains the home of Show Folk of America, the exclusive club for circus performers and fans.

I went there while researching circus stories for Ghost Stories of Venice, proving only what St. Clair said. “Circus performers are a superstitious lot” and they generally do not talk about ghosts.

Perhaps they would not be so reticent if they knew that their former circus priest from the the 1920s remains in Sarasota, dwelling in the shadows at Ca d’Zan, the former home of John and Mable Ringling.