THE BALLOON MAN

Bill Griffith, Wisconsin newspaper owner, circus owner, calliope enthusiast, dies at 81

Bill Griffith, former circus owner, publisher of weekly newspapers, entrepreneur, in 1998 opened the American Calliope Center in Spring Green to exhibit his collection of circus calliopes. The center closed quickly, but the family kept the calliopes, which are in storage. Griffith, 81, died Sunday. CRAIG SCHREINER — State Journal

By GEORGE HESSELBERG, madison.com
October 11, 2010
A man who owns a circus and a newspaper might be wary of the potential for exaggeration in an obituary. So he would write his own.
But a true account of Bill Griffith's life could fill all three rings of the circuses he owned and the front pages of all the newspapers he published.
Griffith, who died Sunday at 81, wrote his own obituary and achieved the impossible by under-selling himself.
"We were trying to list all the businesses he owned or started, and we're still at it," said daughter Linda Schwanke, co-owner of the Spring Green weekly, the Home News.
Not to exaggerate, but: Griffith played trumpet in his own polka band, bought and sold and bought again nearly two dozen little Wisconsin newspapers and shoppers, personally promoted the Harmonicats and the Ink Spots, and was the owner or part-owner of three three-ring circuses based in Appleton and traveling to 34 states.
He did not shy from describing things as the best, the first, the largest and he really was the last — he claimed — surviving three-ring circus owner in Wisconsin.
Not surprisingly, he loved the opera and treasured a large photograph of his first elephant, Little Bertha.
He smoked big cigars and accumulated a stupendous collection of antique circus air calliopes and put them on display until, he notes in his obit, he "found out that most of today's families never heard of calliopes." Schwanke said her father, an Appleton native and printer by trade, was not an idle worshipper.
"He grew up in the Depression, his motivation was he just had to hustle a buck, he always had to have some business going," she said. "He didn't have hobbies."
But it was the circus that guided his life. He was always looking for a promotion, a flair, or a new way to package an old favorite, such as having Santa Claus arrive in a space ship at shopping centers.
"When he was an itty bitty boy, he went to the Ringling circus when it came to Appleton," said Schwanke. "He didn't run away to one; he started his own. He wasn't a circus fan; he was a circus person. He lived for circuses."
Griffith requested calliope music and a Frank Sinatra rendition of "I Did it My Way" for his funeral, which can only be described as being performed at 4 p.m. Thursday at the Richardson-Stafford Funeral Home in Spring Green.