Ed Limbach was five when his mom and dad took him to see the circus for the first time: the Cole Bros. Circus in Northeast Ohio. They got there early to see the crew unload the animals and equipment from the train and eventually pitch the big top.
That was around 1944. Limbach’s love for the circus took off from there. He spent his life attending circuses and collecting circus memorabilia, and even promoted four or five circuses in Portage County.
Limbach calls his circus memorabilia collection “the museum;” it includes promotional posters and brochures, a miniature replica of a traveling circus, stuffed animals, games, vintage photograph collections and much more. His most prized piece is a headdress worn by Sadie, a performer for the Shipp and Feltus circus, circa 1917.
Limbach is now 85 years old and lives at Independence Village in Aurora, where, on July 18, he shared a viewing of a humble portion of his circus memorabilia collection during an event titled “Ed’s Dream Big Circus Showcase,” orchestrated by Independence Village’s life enrichment leaders Nicole Derthick and Patti Cataldo.
“On Friday morning, we have a coffee and conversation, and the topic was, what is your favorite hobby,” Derthick said. “Ed showed up, and he and I had an almost two-hour conversation about his circus memorabilia collection and his life, and I just thought it was something really special that we needed to share. He doesn’t live too far away and we thought, how can we bring some of his collection here, and the whole event has collaboratively snowballed from there.”
Although Limbach lives at Independence Village, he still visits his home in Aurora where his wife Lynn Limbach lives and where his memorabilia collection takes up at least an entire room of their house.
The event was a success. Hailey McCracken performed fire spinning in the patio area before the crowd gathered in the cafeteria for snacks; music was performed by Debbie Darling. Limbach’s collection was displayed in the community meeting room next to the cafeteria, where visitors could view at their own leisure.
Limbach’s life as a circus fan
After Limbach graduated from Bowling Green State University, he spent three and a half years in the Army, which gave him the opportunity to see circuses in Australia, Thailand and Hawaii.
When he returned to the States, he was hired at the American Water Works Company. The job required that he travel to different locations around the country, and that’s when his circus memorabilia collecting really took off.
“This [job] expanded my horizons in that I would see different circuses in these towns where we owned a water system,” Limbach said. “Circuses in those days – this would be in the ‘60s – there were a lot of poster advertisements. It seemed like there’d be posters in every window in the commercial area and, when the circus was over, I’d make it a point to go down through the town and collect as many posters as I could. That, kind of, got me started [collecting].”
As he became more financially stable, he joined the Circus Fans Association of America and the Circus Historical Society, where he attended conventions sponsored by the organizations.
“It was a blessing to go to these conventions with the Circus Fans and the Circus Historical Society,” Limbach said. “They would have these gigantic auctions as part of the program for the convention and I would come away from them loaded with memorabilia that I purchased.”
Throughout the years, Limbach made a few lasting friendships through his affiliation with the groups. One such friendship came when the Circus Fans convention was held in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in 2010. He had contacted the president of Circus Fans and suggested they write a letter to the owner of the Kelly Miller Circus, John Ringling North II, to invite him to the convention. They wrote the letter and Ringling North II responded, “we’ll be there.”
“As it turned out, the president of Circus Fans made me the official host of John Ringling North II and his wife [Shirley],” Limbach said. “So I made first class hotel reservations for them, and then I went to the airport and met them when they got off the plane. During the convention, I arranged to recognize them with a plaque and all that stuff. I hosted a dinner with John and his wife and the people from Kelly Miller and it worked out fine.”
Ringling North II is the son of the late treasurer, director, operations chief and vice president of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus, Henry Ringling North. Ringling North II grew up traveling with the Ringling Broc. Barnum and Bailey Circus and is the last of the Ringling family to have operated a circus; he owned the Kelly Miller Circus until it permanently closed in 2017.
Limbach and Ringling North II hit it off from the start, not just because Limbach invited him to the convention, but because the two appreciate every aspect of the show, right down to the transformation of an empty lot in any given town.
“The circus is magical; it really is if you think about it,” Ringling North II said. “There’s an empty lot in your town and one morning, you wake up and there’s a whole town there with a giant canvas, and animals, and they have their own restaurant. It’s just magic. And the next morning they’re gone and you wouldn’t even know they were there.”
Their friendship really took off in the years following the convention. 
Ringling North II went to almost every performance of the Kelly Miller Circus, which Limbach found admirable for a man in his position. As a result of Ringling North II’s persistence to attend all of the shows, he and Limbach were able to reunite every time the circus came to a nearby town.
“Every time we’d play that town, we’d have lunch together, and we kept in touch over the years,” Ringling North II said. “He always showed the greatest hospitality, I can tell you that about Ed. Whether he had you at his own house, or he took you out somewhere, he was always a very good host, and Lynn was a very good hostess.”
In 2011, W.K. Ricksecker Masonic Temple #606 of Aurora sponsored the Kelly Miller Circus. At the time, Limbach wasn’t involved with running the front end of the circus, even though he was a Mason himself, but things changed after he realized they needed help with promotion.
“I couldn’t believe there were so many empty seats,” Limbach said. “So, the next year, the lodge decided to bring the circus back. In the meantime, a new head of the lodge was a friend of mine and he came over to me and said, ‘Would you be so kind as to help with the promotion of the circus?’ He said, ‘I think we did a bad job on that.’”
Limbach had promoted a couple of Carson and Barnes Circuses in the past, so he knew a thing or two about how to bring a crowd to the big top. And he knew how and where to put up posters from his early days of collecting them from dime store windows and local facades.
He accepted the position and began devising a plan to promote the circus. The previous year’s circus did poorly because the lodge had only promoted it in Aurora, but Limbach knew he needed to expand the range to all of Portage County.
So, he drove around the county hanging up posters everywhere he could. He also recruited the Boy Scouts to help get the job done even faster, and because he thought businesses would be more willing to let Boy Scouts hang posters in their establishments opposed to adults.
“The people running the lodge said, ‘how are we going to get all that done?’ Limbach said. “Those Boy Scouts are going to be ambassadors to all these cities. They’re going to get posters up in all these cities and by damned if that’s not what we did. We made quite an impression.”
Limbach also called the Kelly Miller Circus winter headquarters in Hugo, Oklahoma, and requested that they send inserts for the local newspaper to deliver a week prior to the circus.
“I called Hugo, Oklahoma, got a person on the phone, told them what I wanted, and they said, ‘Do you have all this in writing?’ I said no, we got a handshake on it. Trust me,” Limbach said. “All you gotta do is get these inserts to where I tell you you gotta get’em. They said, ‘Okay, we’ll do it.’ They couldn’t believe I was calling them for these tabloids.”
Ed’s approach to running the front end of the circus paid off quite well.
“My wife, bless her heart, came into the big top and says, ‘I want you to come outside and see what’s happening,’” Limbach said. “The crowd was lined up clear around the big top. John Ringling North II said, ‘Ed, we made money today.’”
