On multiple crossings over the next month’s Blondin would perform numerous acrobatics on the wire to excite crowds of thousands by walking it blindfolded or pushing a wheelbarrow across while doing stunts. Two of his most outrageous stunts were when he carried his own 140 lb. agent across on his back and on another occasion carried a small specially adapted cook stove, pan and eggs to the middle and prepared an omelet which he lowered down to a tour boat below for them to eat. Needless to say, Blondin was a showman admired by thrill seekers for decades and became an unbeatable legend of Niagara Falls who continued to perform in Europe until his death in 1897 at his home in London.
Lloyd D. Miller was born in Marion to Walter Oscar Miller and Fannie E. Simpson on August 25th, 1904, the oldest son of five children to survive to adulthood. His younger siblings were George L., Lois W., Ben L. & John L. The family lived at 509 Midway Street (now called Eisenhower St.) and Walter first worked as a brick fireman at the Marion Pressed Brick Plant and later as a laborer at the Bracy flour mill on N. Market Street. When Lloyd’s mother died suddenly in 1923, Lloyd dropped out of high school after only completing 3 years and went to work for the Slogo coal mine near Marion.
At the age of 19, Lloyd left Marion to work with a circus who had performed in Marion. Four years later he returned as the “pony boss” of the Sam Dill Circus when it played in Marion. He began turning his attention from ponies and horses to the high wire performers overhead. While in the circus’s winter quarters at Sarasota, Florida he practiced the feats of the wire performers until he became adept at the art and became a high wire performer in 1932 with the Al G. Barnes Circus. His next chance to visit family was in 1933 when the circus performed in Cape Girardeau. After Cape, he reunited with his father in California who had moved there for work during the depression having left his younger sons in the care of his now married daughter, Mrs. Earl Brown, 1109 E. College Street. After the reunion with his father, the troupe were engaged at the Chicago World’s Fair in the same year. In 1934, while performing in Peoria Lloyd met his wife, Grace Lepper, and married. Following were engagements in New York, Canada, Mexico and another visit to Marion in April 1938, the first full reunion of the Miller family in over a decade.
In 1940, at the urging of the Barnes circus, in an attempt to appear more exotic, Miller legally changed his name from Lloyd D. Miller to Lloyd Blondin Rellim taking the name of the famous “Blondin” and claiming him as his grandfather (he really wasn’t) while also turning his last name Miller backwards. He also claimed in press releases that his parents were tightrope walkers and whereas it makes a good story, they obviously weren’t.
Miller, now known as Blondin Rellim, worked a routine involving two other men who balanced bicycles on a high wire while they supported a bar on their shoulders in which the third man would balance himself on a third bicycle anywhere from 50 to 120 feet off the ground with no net. To appear more exotic the group of men often appeared for press releases in lederhosen and billed themselves as Blondin-Rellim’s Alpine high wire act. The act was wildly successful and never failed to attract large crowds wherever they went.
When the U.S. entered WWII in 1941, Miller lost his two partners in the act when they were drafted into military service. Miller himself, who was then too old, decided to go into war work and went to New Orleans where he helped build ships, serving as a cable inspector. While inspecting cable, Miller began working out a future high wire rigging in his mind. After the war was over he made drawings and had the rigging built.
The rigging Miller invented stood 120 feet high. At the top was an electrically controlled see-saw arrangement with bars at each end in which Rellim could do handstands on a chair and ride a bicycle on one end while his partner, Ruth McCrea, could perform on a trapeze at the other. The climax of the act would come when he rode his bike to one end of the narrow bar and then suspend half the front wheel in space causing the audience great apprehension. Few high wire acts in the early days ever worked with a net.
In April of 1947, while performing at a Police Circus in the Arena at St. Louis, the St. Louis Post Dispatch published an extensive article with the stocky, 5 foot 5 inch, 174 pound high wire artist. He explained that he and his wife had two children, Joyce Lo who was 10 and Neal who was 5 and that both were learning to be aerialists. The article concluded with the line, “He hasn’t fallen yet.”
Only four months later on August 25th, Lloyd and his partner, Ruth, were concluding their act in front of 20,000 people in St. Paul at the Minnesota State Fair. Ruth had already been lowered to the ground and as Lloyd waved to the audience a jam in the lowering mechanism caused him to lose his grip and plummet to the ground killing him almost instantly. The Rellim’s two children were in a dressing room at the time and did not see the accident.
Miller’s body was returned to Marion for funeral services at Mitchell Funeral Home but was apparently taken to Quincy, Illinois for interment where his grave is marked with an artful monument detailing the high wire act that he loved to perform on.
(Sources: St. Louis Post Dispatch, Wikipedia, The Garrett Clipper, The Kokomo Tribune, The Honolulu Advisor, Chicago Tribune, Williamson County Historical Society, Federal Census Records, Marion City Street Directories; posted by Sam Lattuca on 8/26/2018)