The advice was natural for Gooch because in her younger days, growing up in Dayton, she was a local performer who guest-starred with the Barnum & Bailey Circus when it came to town during the 1940s.
Born in 1935, Gooch was the eighth of her birth parents’ 10 kids. According to records from Montgomery County Children Services, Gooch’s parents didn’t “seem to have any sense of responsibility toward the children” and they would “drink, fight and quarrel.”
After her mother had a nervous breakdown and her father went to jail, according to Gooch, she and her siblings were taken from their parents and put into the Children’s Home of Montgomery County. Gooch was not even a year old when she entered the home.
Gooch was sent to live with a family in West Milton until she was 3 years old. She enjoyed life in West Milton and thought that’s where her family was. She especially loved riding in a basket on a bike with her “sister” Phyllis. She remembers the day that she was taken back to the home.
“All I remember is sitting in the backseat of a Buick, with the back window that was an oval. I kept saying, ‘Where I’m going?’ I thought, ‘That’s my family,’” she said.
Gooch was taken back to the home because she had been adopted by Louis and Lucille Conger of Dayton. Gooch described the Congers as having more wealth than her prior family. She said her adoptive mother put her right into show business.
“Shirley Temple was hot at that time. I was being groomed to be the next Shirley Temple, and I thought ‘Oh my God.’ I had to perform. Sometimes I felt like I was in a glass cage,” she said.
Quickly after being adopted, Gooch began studying piano, ballet, tap, toe, acrobatics, singing, adagio and elocution. It wasn’t long before she had talent scouts booking shows for her all over Dayton. Gooch remembers playing at the Victory Theatre, now known as the Victoria Theatre, and the Dayton Masonic Center. She described singing the first “coast-to-coast hookup” for WING, though she doesn’t know what exactly that meant.
“I have no idea. I know I sang ‘Alice Blue Gown.’ The two guys I remember were Jack Wymer and Charlie Reeder. Charlie was my organist and pianist,” she said.
Gooch doesn’t remember how, but she was chosen with others to work with the Barnum & Bailey Circus when it came to town in the summers. Gooch said that “the boys were at war,” and the performers were to meet at Dayton Union Station on Sixth Street to walk the animals to the old fairgrounds.
Gooch would practice with circus performers and animals. Her favorites were the one-humped camels and the elephants. She would ride atop an elephant into the tent. Once in the ring, the elephant would pick Gooch up with its trunk and set her on the ground.
“What used to rouse the crowd is that I would lay under this wooden thing. And here comes this gigantic foot [from elephant]. The whole audience is screaming. She’d touch the wood and put no weight on me at all. How could they do that? They were so gentle,” she said.
Besides working with the animals, she also performed acrobatics. She remembers being tossed around during performances.
“It’s hard to describe. I used to come off a 10-foot ladder and jump into his arms and he’d catch me. They kind of throw your body around like a rag doll,” she said.
Gooch would spend 10 to15 days with the circus in the summer, and she would meet many different people. At the time, freak shows were still a part of the circus, and Gooch remembers becoming friends with a seal boy and an 800-pound woman.
“He [seal boy] had gorgeous eyes. He had a family. I was fascinated by him. She [800-pound woman] was beautiful. She was gorgeous and took a liking to me. She was dressed beautifully in a red gown with her nails done, but she was huge. Huge and gorgeous,” she said.
Some of her most precious memories are from her summers with the circus. She said she also learned to be empathetic with others. She realized all the people in the circus were just trying to make a living.
“They’re human just like we are. Even then I realized those that were behind cages, and some people made fun of them, were there because they had to. They had families and kids to feed,” she said.
Gooch worked with the circus for four or five years. Afterward, she continued to perform all over the Dayton area until she was around 20 years old. She wanted to go to New York City, but her mother wouldn’t allow it. That’s when she quit performing.
After quitting, Gooch took a job at Dayton Daily News in the classifieds department and met her husband John there when he ran into her, spilling papers everywhere. They were married just a few months later and were together until his death in 1996.
She was a homemaker and has two children. She also volunteered helping suicidal teens and children with physical disabilities throughout her life. Now she said she takes care of others the best she can. Gooch said that she loved her time in the circus and that it helped her later in life.
“I’ve enjoyed myself my whole life. I’m not afraid of anyone. I’m not afraid of anything. Two eyes, ears, hands; it’s all normal to me. The only thing I’ll back up for is if something has horns and a tail,” she said.
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