I was the only one to stick with it, so I was pleased to learn that Ms. Brunn did not originally come from a circus family, either. Her mother, like mine, had seemed to be distant from it all. 

"My mother never wanted me to do it," Ms. Brunn confessed. "We used to break everything in the house." 

Except for the miniature silver elephant on the railing outside Ms. Brunn's front door, there is no hint the woman who lives there appeared with the Greatest Show on Earth, or headlined at Radio City Music Hall, or toured with Spike Jones and the Harlem Globetrotters. To neighbors she is simply Lottie, the lively woman with the irrepressible smile who still moves with a dancer's grace. But inside her home is a compact career museum. 

On a recent visit there, I was met at the door by Ms. Brunn, whose feet were clad in her trademark high heels. Photographs of the Brunn Dynasty, as the juggling historian Karl-Heinz Ziethen has dubbed her family, decorate the walls.

Meet the relatives: there is Michael Chirrick, her son, spinning three volleyballs (one on a mouth-stick) while executing a backward roll. There is Ernest Montego, her half-brother, riding a unicycle as numerous rings circle around his body. And of course there is Francis, whose rigorous style of performance and endless devotion to the art have made him a legend in his field, caught in a rare moment of stasis. 

Her husband, Ted Chirrick, pointed out that juggling was not a field in which one performer could ride on the coattails of another. 

Ms. Brunn's regimen attests to that. "I used to practice five, six, seven hours per day," she said. "The more I warmed up, the better I felt. Even doing two or three shows, I would practice the same." 

It has been 60 years since Ms. Brunn started practicing with her brother, Francis, in Aschaffenburg, their hometown near Frankfurt.

Francis, now 74, still performs, but Lottie limits her involvement to occasional teaching and coaching. In recent years she has taught or lectured at the State University of New York at Purchase, Ringling's Clown College and the Big Apple Circus School in East Harlem, as well as at local clubs. 

Her training began with her father, Michael, the owner of a restaurant and a gymnasium. He taught himself to juggle in a French prison camp during World War I. Inspired by a touring circus, Michael Brunn practiced juggling with stones and later moved on to apples and oranges. 

She began practicing with her brother, Francis. Then he was sent to Berlin to attend a special acrobatic school, and wrote letters home charting his progress. "He wrote that he could do three balls in one hand," Ms. Brunn recalled. "I said: 'That's impossible. I can't even do three with two hands!"  

Eventually, she mastered four rings in each hand - simultaneously, at age 14. When Francis returned, the duo practiced together with an exuberance that set spectators buzzing, and local fame led to the start of their professional career in 1939. "A small stage show came to our village, lots of acts," Ms. Brunn said. "Somebody knew we were practicing. They came out to the farm and asked would we be in the show." Their performance so electrified the audience that they were offered a contract on the spot... "From this day," she said, "we never come back." 

At the IJA's 1984 festival in Las Vegas, Lottie watches her son, Michael Chirrick

Sister and brother, Lottie and Francis Brunn

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