Her story begins in midair. How could it not?
At 19, when she put off her début to join the circus, Elizabeth “Bunny” Wight promised her father that she’d never do aerial work. Seventy years later, she realized she was free to break that promise. She trained hard, horrifying a tour bus driver in England by practicing chin-ups on the luggage rack. The sight of her on her 80th birthday—lithe and graceful in a black-sequined red leotard, hanging from her ankles and then smoothly pulling herself up to stand with her arms raised in triumph—so stunned a professor friend that he came up to her afterward. “Elizabeth,” he said, “I want you to teach me how to do that.” “Oh, you need a professional to teach you trapeze,” she said, ready to give him her teacher’s name. “No,” he said hastily. “I mean, teach me how to live like you do.”
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