tion. “It was like going to a museum, but I had free run of the
house,” she says.
Herringshaw says Fred was a rather stern man who lightened
up when the circus came to town. “He’d grab me and take me
there,” she says, and they’d receive the VIP treatment behind
the scenes. “Everyone knew who he was,” she says.
Luke says Fred went out west to visit his sister in Arizona,
and died there. Mary Esther sold the house in 1964 to Frank
and Bennis Sumner, who have lovingly cared for it since.
SOLID CONSTRUCTION
Mrs. Sumner says the Cards began building the house in
1910 and completed it in 1914. Three rows of bricks were used
on the façade of the house, undoubtedly in an effort to make it
hurricane proof.
A solarium, perhaps used as a health treatment by the Cards,
goes around the perimeter of the house, whose best-known
feature is its many windows — 76 in all.
The Sumners say they had no idea who the former residents
were when they bought the house nearly a half century ago,
but they fell in love with it, the river, and the view. “We only
knew that a famous lady had lived here, but we didn’t know
who,” says Mrs. Sumner.
One of the first things the Sumners did was remove the
elephant hide hanging over the stairway. Besides the hide, the
only items left in the house were five trunks, some with Fred
and Zora’s name on them, a dining set, a lamp used to signal
boats on the river in the early days, and a collection of newspaper
clippings.
As only the third owners of the historic residence, the Sumners
have appreciated it not just as a house, but as a home.
“It’s just been a privilege to live here,” Mrs. Sumner says.
Various touches throughout the grounds and house pay
tribute to the former owners. Lion statuary guarding a gazebo
pays tribute to Lucia, while elephant statuary in the front yard
is a nod to Fred. Edie, a yapping beagle-mix stray the Sumners
rescued during a trip to Tennessee, continues the home’s tradition
of love for animals.
Except for a kitchen renovation and the removal of a windmill,
a 5,000-gallon water tower and a cistern, little has changed
since the days of the Alispaws, or the Cards, for that matter.
“We’re just caretakers,” Mrs. Sumner says. “We’ve tried to
ED DRONDOSKI
Frank and Bennis Sumner have owned the historic Card house, once the
home of ‘’the world’s bravest woman,” Lucia Zora, since 1964.
maintain it as it was and we really haven’t altered anything
except with paint.”
Although she never met Zora, Mrs. Sumner feels a special
connection to her. She says she recently found a letter written
to Zora in the months before her death. In it, a friend expressed
sympathy for the pain and suffering Zora was enduring in her
final months of her life. That she apparently lies in an unmarked
grave is especially unsettling to Mrs. Sumner.
“It just seems like all the pieces of the puzzle are falling
together. An unmarked grave — how sad. She was truly a brave
lady. I can’t believe it.”
COVER STORY
ED DRONDOSKI
This trunk, used by circus performers Lucia Zora and Fred Alispaw, was one
of the things left in the Card home when the Sumners bought it in 1964.
ED DRONDOSKI
This stone marks the apparent completion date of the Card home in 1914.
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