Readers of the "Bulletin" and "Newsletter" didn't have to look too hard for her  - her "Juggler's Junction" and, later, "Best from Betty" columns became ubiquitous fixtures of the publications. Mention of her by other reporters was also frequent.

In September 1947, the 16-year-old "jugglienne," as her letterhead stated, was pictured in the budding of her career. Although taken amid the same back yard foliage, gone are the simple blouse and skirt. Now she is posed, a little proudly and looking a touch camera shy, in a satiny performance blouse with puffed sleeves that is tied coyly at the midriff. She wears bright slacks and holds four rings next to her spinning ball.

At the 1949 IJA convention she was pictured in a studiously bored pose, sitting in a chair spinning her ball, with the look of one wondering how long the damn thing was going to stay up there. The story of that convention brought Gorham space on the cover of "Life" magazine.

She was working more dates now and travel brought her into the company of many more fellow jugglers, all of whom she reported on for her readers. And more - she seemed to be privy to a pipeline of information on who was playing where and when. The young girl who had come to the "Bulletin" and to the IJA to increase her knowledge of juggling was returning the favor.

She met countless professionals - Pryde and Daye, the Belmont Brothers, The Willys, E.E. Myers, Billy Tirko, Harry Moll, Ray Wilbert, Jack Greene and Bobby May. And she was meeting amateurs, encouraging them as she had been encouraged. Perhaps a highlight of these meetings was with Francis Brunn in Denver in 1951.  Although she mentioned only the facts in her own column, it was reported by another person that Brunn highly complimented her performance.

Her act was full of props: tennis rackets and ball, devil sticks, spinning ball, hoops, clubs and even a spinning basin. By the end of the '40s, she was fully a professional, expanding outside her native Iowa, touring the mid west and northwest states. She traveled with the Ford Unit and later the Massey Harris Farm Implement Show - those great traveling advertisements that filled the bill for a short while after the demise of vaudeville.

On May 20, 1953, while playing a night club in Spokane , Wash., Gorham lost all her props, music and costumes in a fire that burned the club to the ground.  The response to her plight was so strong and so immediate from Harry Lind and others that she was able to work another club date just two days later.

By the mid-fifties her career had blossomed. She was working the larger circuits, hitting St. Louis, Montreal, and New York City. In Philadelphia, she appeared on "Big Top Circus," a TV show that headlined many jugglers and circus performers. She was beginning to criss­cross the country, playing the Gypsy Room in Atlanta one year, the Police Circus in California the next. She toured Asia with the USO and played cruise ships. Her spot on Groucho Marx's 'You Bet Your Life" was good enough to wind up in "The Best of Groucho" collection.

In 1961 while playing a fair date, she met Ken Willer, a hand balancer whose signature trick was the rarely-accomplished single-finger balance. She was doing a stage show and he was with a small circus across the lot. A fellow juggler introduced them and they were married the following year. It was the start of a happy 25 year-and-counting collaboration. They continued to do single acts until 1970 when they began performing as a duo. Today, although no longer juggling professionally, Betty joins Ken in his act of hand balancing, rola-bola and juggling.

Throughout the years of her success, she maintained the network of ties she began as an adolescent. Remembered as a quiet, talented woman, dedicated to juggling and her fellow jugglers, Betty Gorham Willer is still a member ofthe IJA, with membership number 1, our First Lady.