Gunther Will Be Gone, but He Won’t Be Replaced

When famed animal trainer Gunther Gebel-Williams appeared in San Diego for the first time in July, 1969, Eric Beheim was there.

When Gunther (nobody calls him Gebel-Williams) begins his final San Diego appearance on Tuesday, Beheim will be there. It’s a job (he’s a saxophonist), but it’s also a devotion.

“I started going to circuses when I was 6 years old in Cleveland, and I haven’t stopped,” said Beheim, 43. He’s a musician who lives in Lakeside and joins the circus orchestra every summer when it plays San Diego.

“Once Gunther is retired, people will start bragging that they actually saw him perform,” Beheim said. “It’ll be like old-timers today who saw the legendary Clyde Beatty or Frank Buck.”

After 20 years as the star of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the 54-year-old Gunther has announced plans to retire after a farewell tour with the circus, which arrives Tuesday at the Sports Arena for a six-day run.

Beheim remembers Gunther wowing the crowd in 1969 as he was propelled from a teeter board onto the back of an elephant. He remembers in the 1970s watching in an empty arena as Gunther trained a rare and temperamental white tiger between shows.

He remembers one night when Gunther’s finale--riding a tiger atop an elephant--culminated right next to the orchestra.

“I looked up at the tiger, and he looked back down at me, right in my eyes,” Beheim said.

On this tour, Gunther’s closer involves simultaneous control of three rings of animals--Siberian and Bengal tigers in one, elephants in a second, and Lipizzaner horses in a third.

“They may find someone to succeed Gunther, but not to replace him,” Beheim said.

Amazing and Sticky

Facts that will dazzle your friends:

* The Del Mar Smurfs chewed 234 feet of Bubble Tape bubble gum while beating teams from Temecula, Poway and Vista to win the Vista Little League tournament.

Amurol Products Co. of Naperville, Ill., makers of Bubble Tape, had heard that the Smurfs were partial to the chewy stuff and rushed a case to Del Mar in time for the tourney. It comes in skinny rolls 6 feet long.

* Syndicated columnist Bob Greene says Pete Rose speaks with an Ohio accent, “the prettiest accent on Earth.”

But Times reporter Barry Horstman, like Rose, a native of Cincinnati, says that isn’t so. He says Rose talks more like people who live across the Ohio River in Kentucky.

How does he explain that? Kentucky is where the race track is, Horstman notes.

* The San Diego Libertarian Club, long accused of harboring a far-out philosophy, will erase all doubt at Tuesday’s meeting.

Title of the after-dinner speech: “Anarchists’ Guide to the Galaxy.”

How Times Change

That was then, this is now.

U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson has come to San Diego twice to take a bow for the renovation of the downtown Sandford Hotel: last October when he was seeking reelection and this week as he warms up to run for governor.

Senior housing is a major political issue, and Wilson after all was helpful in shifting $500,000 in federal funds to the project. The rest of the $6.5 million came mostly from two nonprofit

organizations run by Mavoureen O’Connor.

At a ceremony Wednesday night, Wilson cut a ribbon and praised O’Connor as “the Houdini of those who make housing happen.” The smell of irony was in the air.

When Wilson was the all-powerful mayor of San Diego, O’Connor was rebuffed in her bid for an appointment to the Housing Commission. Her ideas on how to finance low-income housing were seen as too unconventional.

No More X-Rated Jogging

“I don’t know , but I’ve been told. . . “

Trainees in the Marine Corps drill instructor school sometimes run in formation along the shore in Mission Beach and Pacific Beach, red shorts, T-shirts, combat boots, DI school flag held proudly aloft.

So it was Wednesday afternoon. Sunbathers stopped, looked and listened. What they heard was surprising to some.

The Marine Corps says it won’t happen again. Next time the DIs jog in public, there will be no X-rated singing in cadence.