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20 July 1942 · 24 July 1943 · 17 May 1960
The circus Mishawaka saw most was the Mills Bros. Circus of Ohio, and the Circus Historical Society's routes fix its three stands exactly. It played Mishawaka on 20 July 1942, in a week that ran Nappanee, Syracuse, Mishawaka, Elkhart; again on 24 July 1943, coming in from Bremen; and again on 17 May 1960, between Niles and Hobart. The show traveled with animals: its published 1942 roster names an elephant man, Fred Holoway; the 1943 official route book names Pat O'Brien in the same post, with ponies and dogs among the personnel and a snake handler in the side show; and the 1949 roster carries a menagerie department under its own superintendent, George Suitca. Between stands the animals wintered in Ohio — Ashland in the 1943 book, Jefferson by 1960 — never in Mishawaka.
Where the tents stood in the postwar years, living memory keeps at its own strength: "The circus was always held at Dodge's parking lot," recalled Robin Lee Hacker of the Mishawaka High School class of 1974, in the alumni Memories of Mishawaka — the Dodge works' lot, printed as memory and no stronger.
Principal sources
- Mills Bros. Circus routes, 1942 and 1960, and the official route book of 1943 (Circus Historical Society), read first-hand; roster of 1949.
- "Memories of Mishawaka," alumni recollections collected by Alice Beard (Robin Lee Hacker, MHS '74).