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Uncovering the mystery behind burial of baby elephant in 1963
By EMMALEE C. TORISK
CANFIELD
It’s not the most obvious place for a baby elephant to be buried.
In fact, it doesn’t look like much at all.
You’d never know that on Sept. 2, 1963 — 51 years ago Tuesday — 3-month-old elephant Honey, a nonperforming part of the Gene Holter Wild Animal Show, was laid to rest in a low-lying spot right around what is now the grass-covered yellow parking area, near the road’s turn to Gate 13.
“If I was betting, ... I’d say it’s someplace back there,” said Lee F. Kohler, a Canfield Fair director who joined the board in 1973 and manages grain, hay, farm machinery and the tractor pull. “But everybody who would know [for sure] is in the ground.”
Kohler added that he recalled hearing about the little pachyderm’s death — she became ill with pneumonia Friday, Aug. 30, 1963, and died early that following Monday — and burial not long after he became involved with the Canfield Fair. Even today, the area where Honey was buried is neatly kept and well maintained.
He noted that the fairgrounds were a lot different in 1963, when the traveling animal show entertained capacity grandstand audiences during the 117th Canfield Fair.
A Vindicator article from Sept. 3, 1963, states that Honey “was buried in a remote corner of the fairgrounds,” which makes sense, considering that the grounds at that time, including parking, totaled only 70-some acres, Kohler said.
Today, the Canfield Fair’s 353 acres comprise 178 acres of midway and 175 acres of parking. The grounds expanded gradually over the years — a segment here, a segment there — as the fair board had the money to do so.
In 1963, the current yellow parking area, located beyond the pony barns and the trailer park, was wooded and far away from the heart of the fairgrounds. It also was where the fair kept its manure pile.
A 1983 interview as part of the Youngstown State University Oral History Program with Homer Miller, the fairgrounds’ head of maintenance from 1947 to 1979, references the elephant’s burial — which Miller calls “the strangest thing we ever did.” He also mentions burying an alligator.
“I buried it in the manure pile,” Miller says in the interview, referring to the elephant. “We didn’t have a back [hoe] or anything. We couldn’t dig a hole that night to bury an elephant. There were a lot of things going on.”
He notes, too, that Honey’s death was “supposed to be a military secret,” and that “nobody was supposed to know anything about it.”
In an attempt to keep the matter quiet, Miller “couldn’t even go over to get it until [midnight] that night.” But by 7 a.m., the secret was out.
“The next morning, I went over and everybody wanted to know where we buried the elephant,” Miller says. “They knew more about it than I did.”
According to the Vindicator article, even “an improvised plastic oxygen tent and round-the-clock veterinarian care” failed to save Honey’s life. She made a brief walk on the grandstand track during the Thursday night show and was “introduced,” then fell ill the next day.
In the article, Homer Schaeffer, then-president of the fair board, said elephants are “particularly susceptible to a change in climate” and that “the cool weather here apparently caused the pneumonia.”
Honey was born earlier that summer to one of the older elephants in the show, and was valued at about $3,500. In 1963, the Gene Holter Wild Animal Show played a solid route of fairs from May to October, traveling 25,000 miles and transporting approximately 70 animals — many of which appeared in films — in the process.
Craig L. Myers, fair board president, noted that such animal shows, as well as circuses, were part of the Canfield Fair throughout much of its history. It wasn’t until the past 25 years or so, he said, that they began to fall out of favor and gradually were replaced by other attractions.
Neither he nor Bev Fisher, fair manager, could put their finger on exactly what caused that shift. It could be that seeing exotic animals isn’t “such a big deal anymore,” thanks to TV and other technologies, or that transporting said animals became more difficult.
“When was the last time you saw a show traveling by train?” Myers asked, adding that many shows traveled by train because it was relatively inexpensive.
Fisher noted, too, that there are “not as many animals out on the road for the fair board to choose from.”
Regardless of the reason, times have changed.
But the show in which Honey appeared was “just what the spectators wanted,” according to an Aug. 31, 1963, Vindicator article.
“The grandstand fills up quickly and the applause is generous,” it reads.