Life Member Tim Challis (Zoobie the Clown) may have traveled the furthest to attend the festival, coming from his job as a computer teacher at the American School in Kuwait. Even more remarkable was the fact that this was the first festival Challis attended since joining the IJA in 1978! He and his family have traveled the world since 1984 teaching about computers in international schools in Indonesia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and now Kuwait.

 

Early in the festival, propmaker Todd Smith was on the phone regularly trying to calm his wife back in Cleveland, Cathy Boyle. He assured her that their first child wouldn't be born until it was due in another couple of weeks. But on Tuesday evening when Cathy called and told Todd to get home NOW; he did the right thing and got on the next plane. Just in the nick of time, too, it turned out! Smith phoned back to Las Vegas within 24 hours with news of the birth of the couple's new son, Walker James Smith.

 

Another birthday celebration was enjoyed by eight-year-old Chad Patz on Wednesday. What's remarkable was that Chad has celebrated every one of his birthdays at an IJA festival since the day he was born. (Except that his seventh birthday happened a month before the 1994 Burlington Festival, but that was the lJA's fault for moving the fest date into August.) He and the other six members of the Patz family have attended all of the last eight festivals. They repeat a mantra in the car on their festival trips to help Chad remember his heritage: "One in Denver, two in Baltimore, three in LA, four in St. Louis, five in Montreal, six in Fargo, seven in Burlington and eight in Las Vegas..." Chad also made his Renegade stage debut in Las Vegas, doing three and four balls, three clubs, and a five ball flash on the first try.

 

Newly-elected IJA board member Braidy Brown, assisted by roper extraordinaire Mark Allen, conducted another marathon auction to raise funds for preservation of the IJA archives. Bidding on almost 200 items lasted more than three hours and raised $2,237, the second-largest amount ever. The top fundraiser was Anthony Gatto's first clubs, hand-made by his father, Nick ($375).

 

Other high­ dollar items were Art Jennings's painting of a juggler ($176), a bedspread hand­made by Roger Montandon's wife 50 years ago ($105), a piece of Great American Juggling Company art ($72), Sergei Ignatov's jacket and green card ($57), and a photo of Jo Anne Swaim watching David Letterman juggle ($35).

 

Soren Munteanu, one of ihe world's few seven club jugglers, stumbled onto the festival and dropped in briefly. Munteanu is now working cruise ships out of Los Angeles, and came to Las Vegas Wednesday to visit friends. He didn't know of the IJA festival, but saw the JA welcome message on the Hacienda sign and stopped in to visit.

 

A person well-known to juggling collectors, Ken Cummins, came to Vegas for his first IJA gathering since 1957. Cummins wrote "Bungling Juggling," an instructional booklet, in the early 1960s because there was no other instructional book available at the time, and named the book after the act that he and his brother, Carter, performed for four years in the early 1960s. He came to this festival primarily to take Dave Finnigan's Juggling Institute workshop.

 

A true old-timer in the crowd was 84-year-old local resident Willie Danville, who talked about the month in 1926 when he and Enrico Rastelli appeared together with Circus Shumann in Copenhagen. Danville was born into a show business family, the Faludi troupe, and trained in acrobatics. Rastelli was in his prime that month that the Faludis and Rastelli appeared in the same show. Danville said the Great One did about 45 minutes of the three-hour show by himself, assisted by his wife. "He was a genius, unbelievable!" said Danville.