COVER STORY
19
“Whatever money Fred had, he was extremely tight with my
aunt, and I’m sure he was with Zora, too,” Herringshaw says.
“That was the main thing everybody said about Fred is that he
was just so tight — or maybe he didn’t have any money.”
Herringshaw’s family inherited the Cards’ burial plots
through their relationship to Mary Esther, who was buried in
another part of the cemetery. Herringshaw, fascinated with
Zora’s life since she was a young girl, says she’s always wondered
where the circus celebrity was buried and only put the
pieces together during the course of the reporting of this story
by Indian River Magazine. She says she would have no objection
if a monument were erected at the grave site to celebrate
Zora’s life. “I think it would be neat,” she says.
The grave situation echoes the circumstances of another
celebrated Zora who died in Fort Pierce — the author Zora
Neale Hurston. Her grave was unmarked until fellow writer
Alice Walker came upon it in 1973 and placed a headstone
proclaiming her “A Genius of the South.” In October, a sculpture
was also placed at the gravesite of Hurston, who was best
known for her book, “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”
IRONIC TWIST
The lack of a grave marker at the Card plot is an ironic twist
for a family that built an imposing home on South Indian River
Drive three bricks thick. The house, a Fort Pierce landmark that
still stands, is often referred to as “the elephant house” or “circus
house” because of its connection to Zora and Fred and the
widely circulated story that they raised a baby elephant there.
Herringshaw says the story goes that someone had sent the
elephant to Fred — perhaps as a joke — and the animal was
penned inside the grounds by a fence erected around the
estate’s brick columns. “My mother recalled that he just sort of
ran around the front yard,” Herringshaw says.
EARLY DAYS
Edith Hoeflich Luke, who spent her preschool years growing
up on the drive and is Mary Esther’s niece, says that when the
Cards lived in the house one of the most prominent features on
the estate was a large dock with a narrow-gauge track that extended
to the front of the property. A push cart would be rolled
down the dock to load pineapples aboard cargo boats.
Luke, 94, recalled the excitement that surrounded Zora when
she arrived in Fort Pierce in the late 1920s.
“I remembered that she joined the Woman’s Club,” Luke
says. “She was invited to everything. She showed the ladies her
scratches and scars from training animals and so on. She was a
very popular person.” Luke says the performer always went by
one name. “She was never called anything but Zora, and she
was billed as Zora — a single celebrity name.”
CIRCUS MEMENTOS
Luke frequently visited the house after her aunt married Fred
Alispaw. Luke says it was decorated throughout with mementos
from Fred and Zora’s life in the circus. “They had some skins of
some of the big cats. The heads were on them and they were
mounted on a pedestal — it was quite impressive. Some of the
school classes were invited into the house to see the animal
skins. The kids were crazy about it.”
Herringshaw recalled a baby elephant hide over the staircase
as well as leopard and lion skins in the library and elephant
tusks over the fireplace. “With beautiful script on one was the
name Snyder,” says Herringshaw, referring to Fred and Zora’s
favorite elephant, which went berserk after their retirement and
had to be put down.
Herringshaw says an alligator head and hide, native American
artifacts and snow shoes — perhaps from the Alispaws’
days in Colorado — also were in the house, as well as a huge
gun cabinet, an elephant hook, a collection of ivory elephant
statues, bullhorns, circus posters and Zora’s costume collec-
>>
ED DRONDOSKI
Riverview Memorial Park general manager Sonya-Elizabeth Trachtman
points to the unmarked grave believed to be that of the celebrated circus
performer Lucia Zora.
ED DRONDOSKI
This lamp was used by Milton Card to signal boats coming to his dock to
load pineapple.