Ex-Daredevil, 91, Plays to Classroom

Florence Zingaro has had two demanding careers during her 91 years: the first as a daredevil cyclist playing American and European vaudeville stages, the second tending to the needs of 65 curious, squirming kindergarten pupils in Canoga Park. Zingaro has garnered raves from both audiences.

Up at 5:30 each weekday morning, she prepares her breakfast and then prepares herself for the rigors of her job as a teacher’s aide at Limerick Avenue School by riding two miles on her stationary bicycle.

Zingaro, affectionately known by the children as “Grandma Dodo,” had her first contact with Limerick school in 1959 when she enrolled her eldest granddaughter, Charmain, in kindergarten. The school was only two years old at the time.

“Charmain cried when I took her in,” Zingaro recalled. The teacher suggested that she remain with her granddaughter, “and I’ve been here, on and off, ever since.”

New Start in 1981

Over the next nine years Zingaro enrolled three of her other grandchildren at Limerick--Liza, Laura and Ana. But it wasn’t until 1981, when she registered Amber (the oldest of her five great-grandchildren) at the school, that Zingaro decided on a new career as a volunteer teacher’s aide.

Currently, her second great-grandchild, Sarah, is a student in the kindergarten class in which she volunteers, and there are three more great-grandchildren waiting in the wings to enter Limerick and carry on the family tradition.

Zingaro’s daily schedule at Limerick goes something like this: First, she sets up Bonnie Bennett’s kindergarten classroom. This includes laying out the proper assignments and work sheets for each student, and making sure that all have the materials they will need that day. Then she gives individual help to the children before classes begin at 8:15 a.m.

“They do the alphabet for me, from A-B-C right on. And I help them with their spelling. When they pass me, they’ve done 125 words.” She also drills them in math.

The special attention Zingaro showers on her young charges does not go unnoticed. “She’s incredible . . . the kids really love her,” said Fern Halem, whose 5-year-old daughter, Stacy, attends Bennett’s kindergarten class.

‘A Rare Find’

“Grandma Dodo has, I guess, what Al Davis would say in pro football is ‘that commitment to excellence,’ ” said school Principal Herman Christopher. “She’s a rare find.”

She also fills a gap in the lives of some of the students. “There are so many children nowadays who don’t have grandparents, or access to anyone who would fit that role,” said Bennett. “So she’s like a second grandmother to our kindergarten.”

Zingaro’s stint as a school volunteer was preceded by equally successful careers in show business.

Billed as “England’s Dainty Dare Devils,” Zingaro and her two daughters, Winona and Nestor, toured Europe and America for over 20 years in a cycling act known as The Diacoffs.

It all began back in her native England, where Zingaro, born in 1894, learned to ride a bicycle in the courtyard of her father’s hotel. At age 17, she joined a German troupe of acrobats and toured Spain, Germany, France, Holland and several other countries for the next few years.

“I used to hang by my teeth and go round and round,” she said, drawing wide circles in the air with her finger. “I couldn’t do it now, you know.”

When World War I began, the rest of the performers returned to Germany, leaving Zingaro without a job. She met her first husband, an actor named Thomas Shelton, when she joined his road show as a trick cyclist. They were married in 1919.

Tom and Florence had two children, Kelvin and Winona, and adopted a third, Nestor. All three children performed with the show from the time they were very young. They borrowed the name “The Diacoffs” for their stage moniker, because, Zingaro said, “in England, if you didn’t have a foreign sounding name, you couldn’t earn the big money.”

The Diacoffs played with Ireland’s Duffy Circus, traveled South Africa with the Boswell Brothers, and performed in Paris’ most famous houses--the Follies Bergeres, Cirque Madrana and the Alhambra. After her husband died in 1938 and her son Kelvin joined the RAF, Zingaro and her two daughters were left alone to run the show.

During World War II, the trio became known as “Vaudeville’s Greatest Cycle Act,” and played the London Palladium five times.

“We traveled from one end of England to the other,” she said. They entertained troops between the bombing raids, blackouts and their civil defense assignments. Zingaro and her daughters narrowly escaped death on several occasions, and the most harrowing incident happened at the Hippodrome Theater in Birmingham.

“We were the last act and had just finished performing,” she said. “We went down to our dressing room below. Then we heard the sirens sound, and all of a sudden the firemen came down. We’d had a direct hit from an incendiary bomb, and were buried underneath the theater.” They remained entombed in the Hippodrome’s rubble for over 12 hours before they were rescued unharmed.

Shift to America

In 1945, Zingaro brought the touring road show to America. The first big engagement was in April, 1946, at New York’s Loew’s State theater on Broadway, where they received second billing to the Mills Brothers. After that, there were appearances at the Roxy and Radio City Music Hall, among other theaters.

“In two years we played 42 states,” she said. “We thought we had gotten out of the bombings, but here we were in worse situations--hurricanes, storms . . . you wouldn’t believe.”

Zigaro reminisces about working the circuit of conventions and sports arenas that took her and her daughters across the country. “I drove this big, 28-seater bus with my two girls, my baggage, and my costumes. I’d get into town, do the act, and then drive 400 miles through the night to the next place. It was a tough life, but I’d do it all over again.”

The trio appeared in the movie “Trigger Junior” with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and their future seemed bright. But their career was cut short when Nestor suffered a serious accident during a show and “lost her nerve,” according to Zingaro. The remaining two cyclists continued to perform for several more years, but the act wasn’t the same without Nestor. The Diacoffs gave their farewell performance in 1952 at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl.

Widowed by her second husband in 1973, Zingaro now lives in a trailer behind her daughter Nastor’s Canoga Park home. She does all of her own shopping and housework, stops in for tea with Winona daily, and sees the rest of her large and still-growing family on a regular basis.

Zingaro has hinted that 1987 may be her last year at Limerick. But she isn’t sure what the future may hold. “We want to go to England and look for a cottage for later on,” she said.

It’s unlikely, however, that she’ll be content weeding the garden. “I have to have excitement,” she said. “Even at my age, I must have something to look forward to.”