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Elephants Trumpeting in the Midtown Tunnel

Through the Queens train yards and into the tunnel to Manhattan, marched the parade. The trumpeting of the pachyderms reverberated like car horns. Gebel-Williams says the elephants sound happy.

I jogged alongside Gebel-Williams, keeping a microphone under his chin when I could. I stepped in manure of all sorts. But once you've stepped in elephant waste, everything else is anticlimactic. I should have worn my old Adidas, but so what?

"I can't do this forever," Gebel-Williams said. "It is time to go on."

It was a storied career. This man broke the mold of lion tamers who subdued jungle cats with a whip and a chair.

For three decades, he delighted circus-goers, sticking his head in a lion's mouth, making tigers dance and jump through hoops of fire. He performed more than 12,000 shows, got nicked and bruised a few times, but never missed an appearance.

A Lesson in Circus Life

In the days after World War Two, his mother joined the Circus Williams as a seamstress, and he began performing as an acrobat at 12. By 1968, he was so good, Ringling Bros.' owner Irvin Feld acquired the German circus primarily to get its animal trainer.

He was an immediate smash, setting all sorts of milestones. He had such great understanding of the animals he was able to get natural enemies — tigers, horses and an elephant — to perform together in one steel cage.

On the day I met him, back in 1989, he saw himself retiring, moving behind the scenes at Ringling Bros., and that's essentially what he did. He performed occasionally, last stepping into the center ring for a show in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Sept. 27, 1998, when he filled in for his son, Mark Oliver.

Last July, Gebel-Williams underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor. His wife, Sigrid, said he realized something was wrong when he lost his peripheral vision during a training session with two tigers. He felt dizzy and weak and walked into one of them.

He died at his Venice, Fla., home of cancer Thursday. He was 66.