Manatee business owners go from circus act to exotic plants
Lynn and Veno Berousek have relocated their Pomello Park Nursery from Venice to East Manatee. The nursery grows and sells a variety of exotic plants, including a wide selection of air plants and other bromeliads.
PAUL VIDELA/Bradenton Herald
From: bradenton.om
By Jason Brtolone
September 3, 2013
MYAKKA CITY -- Running an exotic plant nursery can be a lot like performing a circus act.
If anyone would know, it's Lynn and Veno Berousek.
The couple owns and operates Pomello Park Nursery on a 10-acre tree farm in Myakka City. In a previous life, the Berouseks were better known as "The King of Swords" and "Miss Fantasia and her Feather Fantasy" as they awed crowds in Las Vegas and around the world.
"Show business or any other kind of business; it's how you present it," Veno said.
Coming from a long line of circus performers in his native Czechoslovakia, the 64-year-old applies the same creativity and sense of showmanship in his exotic plant displays as he once did in his sword and balancing act.
A life in the circus
Berousek was only 5 when his family fled the Communist regime in what is now the Czech Republic, leaving young Veno behind as a "hostage" in a promise to the government that his parents and six older siblings would return. But the family never did, and Veno was 16 when he could finally renounce his Czech citizenship and rejoin his family in America, where they had by then established themselves as circus performers.
The Berouseks adopted the stage name of the Berosinis, with Veno and his three brothers gaining fame as an acrobat troupe. The Berosinis were the first attraction at the Circus Circus Hotel-Casino in Vegas, with Veno's father and his trained gorillas and chimpanzees serving as the headlining act. (In the 1976
comedy "Every Which Way But Loose," the orangutan that shared top billing with Clint Eastwood was trained by the Berosinis.)
Veno eventually branched out in a solo act of juggling knives and leaping through a ring of steel swords. He can rattle off a "Who's Who" list of Hollywood A-listers he's shared a stage with, including Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Tom Jones, Diana Ross & the Supremes, Liza Minelli, Flip Wilson, Ike and Tina Turner and B.B. King.
Read more here: http://www.bradenton.com/2013/09/03/4696142/manatee-business-owners-go-from.html#storylink=cpy
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