Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. So, while
Speaker 1: researching some other episode recently, and I don't even remember
Speaker 1: which one, there are several that could have landed me here,
Speaker 1: I came across just a casual mention of Sonora Webster
Speaker 1: Carver and I looked into her briefly, and then I
Speaker 1: had to resist jumping to work on her story at
Speaker 1: the time because I was already so far along in
Speaker 1: the other topic that I would have really made my
Speaker 1: life miserable to change over that late in the game.
Speaker 1: But I was enthralled by her story and a little
Speaker 1: bit trepidacious because it does involve animal trick acts that
Speaker 1: look very, very dangerous. It is, uh, the story is
Speaker 1: mostly heartbreak free in that regard. There's there's one thing
Speaker 1: we'll mention at the end. Um. It was, however, incredibly dangerous,
Speaker 1: but it was primarily for the riders. Uh. And what
Speaker 1: we're talking about today is horse diving, which includes horses
Speaker 1: diving off of platforms. Again, it looks terrifying. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about that relationship with the animals and and their training
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And we're going to talk about not just
Speaker 1: horse diving, but probably the most famous horse diver of
Speaker 1: her time, certainly possibly all time, and that is Sonara
Speaker 1: Webster Carver. But to talk about her, we actually first
Speaker 1: have to talk briefly about Doc Carver to begin with,
Speaker 1: to set the groundwork, um, because he invented this entertainment.
Speaker 1: Uh and Doc carver story is a roller coaster. He
Speaker 1: if you've done any reading about like wild West shows,
Speaker 1: you've heard of him. His life was filled with a
Speaker 1: lot of adventure and a lot of wild tales, some
Speaker 1: of which are probably tall but he genuinely did some
Speaker 1: very very uh, surprising and perhaps bananas things. But we're
Speaker 1: going to give a very brief version of his life here.
Speaker 1: William Frank Carver was born in eighteen fifty one in Winslow, Illinois,
Speaker 1: and his childhood is pretty undocumented. The stories that he
Speaker 1: told about it really contradicted each other. Even biographies differ
Speaker 1: on what year he was born. They differ pretty wildly
Speaker 1: because Doc would sometimes claim to have been born not
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty one, but in eighteen forty. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are various reasons for that probably gave him some credibility
Speaker 1: early on in his life, and he just ran with it.
Speaker 1: And then later on their discussions of people saying, wow,
Speaker 1: you look amazing for your age, and he was like, thanks,
Speaker 1: but he was eleven years younger than he was claiming
Speaker 1: to be. But the important part is that as an adult, Carver,
Speaker 1: who got the nickname Doc because he was trained as
Speaker 1: a dentist, became a skilled sharpshooter, and he toured the
Speaker 1: world in sharp shooting exhibitions and competitions, and he made
Speaker 1: a pretty decent living doing it. He also had a
Speaker 1: Wild West show with Buffalo Bill Cody for a time
Speaker 1: before the two men had a falling out That is
Speaker 1: a whole story in and of itself. Uh. Obsequent touring
Speaker 1: shows that Carver mounted on his own without Buffalo Bill
Speaker 1: were successful, but they ultimately fell apart for a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons. One was economic depression, which meant that people
Speaker 1: couldn't buy tickets, and also because it was discovered that
Speaker 1: Carver had actually been using kidnapped Native Americans in his act,
Speaker 1: and some of them he had just abandoned overseas. But
Speaker 1: so many layers, of so many layers he wrote a
Speaker 1: play titled The Scout, which also toured after this shooting
Speaker 1: act ended, but once it wound down, he launched a
Speaker 1: new entertainment project, and that was using horses and water
Speaker 1: as spectacle dot. Carver claimed the idea for horse diving
Speaker 1: had come to him in eight one when he was
Speaker 1: crossing a bridge over the Platte River on horseback and
Speaker 1: the bridge collapsed. As he and his horse fell into
Speaker 1: the river and survived, it occurred to him that he
Speaker 1: could turn that ability into a show. Although he did
Speaker 1: not make it into one for another thirteen years. Doc
Speaker 1: did include sort of a minimized stage version of his
Speaker 1: fall from that bridge in his performances of The Scout,
Speaker 1: But when it came to the larger scale dive show, Doc,
Speaker 1: who at that point was getting older and was heavier
Speaker 1: than would have been healthy for the horses to carry,
Speaker 1: was not one of the stunt riders. He focused instead
Speaker 1: on training the horses, and one of the skills that
Speaker 1: he really developed was getting a sense of which horses
Speaker 1: were game for this job, and according to him, even
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. He claimed that when he was doing the
Speaker 1: short stage drops in The Scout, which drops a horse
Speaker 1: into a small body of water. It was just a
Speaker 1: couple of feet, but most of the horses could only
Speaker 1: be used once because even though that was a very
Speaker 1: short drop and it was handled, according to him, very safely,
Speaker 1: they were usually too frightened by the experience to do
Speaker 1: it again. But then he did discover one that not
Speaker 1: only seemed fine with it, but would literally walk back
Speaker 1: around and reset himself, ready to do that trick again
Speaker 1: without any urging, which gave him a sense some horses
Speaker 1: actually seemed to enjoy it. Whether or not that's the case,
Speaker 1: we don't know. The first of Doc Carver's diving shows
Speaker 1: was held in Kansas City, Missouri. That was in the
Speaker 1: summer of eight and it was an immediate hit. He
Speaker 1: started touring and he had the same success everywhere he went.
Speaker 1: People just flocked to the novelty of seeing horses dive
Speaker 1: into the water. So now we're going to get to
Speaker 1: Sonora Webster, who was born in Waycross, Georgia on February
Speaker 1: two four. Her family was working class, and we honestly
Speaker 1: don't know a whole lot more about it than that.
Speaker 1: Um I managed to locate some records on a genealogy
Speaker 1: site that indicated that her parents were Ula Marion Webster
Speaker 1: Senior and Lila Gertrude are net Webster. But keep in
Speaker 1: mind those sites are crowdsource, so that's not what we
Speaker 1: would consider necessarily like a um uh, definite source he
Speaker 1: would use. Again, there's next to nothing of them. But
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk a little bit more about her family
Speaker 1: and just a bit from an early age. Nora loved horses.
Speaker 1: When she was five, she tried to trade her newborn
Speaker 1: brother for a carriage horse named Sam that she had
Speaker 1: fallen in love with. This is where I fall in
Speaker 1: love with Sonora, because when I was about that age,
Speaker 1: I tried to sell my little brother at a yard sale,
Speaker 1: just because I thought money would be better than a brother.
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know. I was five, She's Weelon
Speaker 1: and Delon. Sam's owner had made the offer of a
Speaker 1: trade in jest, and Sonora had actually gotten her baby
Speaker 1: brother out of his crib to take him to the
Speaker 1: neighbor for the trade. When her parents caught her at
Speaker 1: what she was doing, she described her let down at
Speaker 1: this deal falling apart as quote literally bursting with grief.
Speaker 1: I was not bursting with grief. My mother was just
Speaker 1: like you know you cannot sell your brother at the
Speaker 1: yard sale. You were kicking the dirt, but not probably
Speaker 1: crying in your room. Fortunately, living in Waycross gave her
Speaker 1: ample opportunities for time with horses, even without any nefarious
Speaker 1: trades of siblings and evolved Livestock was often held at
Speaker 1: the railroad yards in way Cross as a stopping point,
Speaker 1: and she would visit every morning on her way to
Speaker 1: school just for a glimpse of the horses. Often she
Speaker 1: got to school late as a result of this and
Speaker 1: did not seem to care. She flunked first grade because
Speaker 1: of it. That sort of set a tone for her education.
Speaker 1: By the time she was in high school, she was
Speaker 1: routinely cutting classes to ride horses. She didn't finish school,
Speaker 1: not because of the horses, but because her mother had
Speaker 1: to leave way Cross to take care of her own
Speaker 1: ailing father, and that meant that Sonora had to look
Speaker 1: after her younger siblings. She wasn't doing very well in
Speaker 1: school anyway. Her grades were okay, but she was having
Speaker 1: other issues. She had been rejected by a boy that
Speaker 1: she had really fallen for, and she was super embarrassed
Speaker 1: about the whole thing and heartbroken, and the combination of
Speaker 1: those factors just made her very, very willing to drop
Speaker 1: out under the guise of responsibility to her siblings. Still,
Speaker 1: she did say later in life that she regretted not
Speaker 1: finishing school. Information Sonora's early life is pretty sparse, and
Speaker 1: Holly even found a source that indicated that she was
Speaker 1: an orphan. That's not the case, though it is clear
Speaker 1: where the idea might have come from. She doesn't talk
Speaker 1: about her father at all in her autobiography, and her
Speaker 1: mother is never mentioned by her given name. She's just
Speaker 1: called mother. She also fleetingly references quote conflicts in my
Speaker 1: parents marriage once in her autobiography when she's talking about
Speaker 1: her own views on marriage. But that's really it. As
Speaker 1: we'll see in Just a Moment, she found an alternate
Speaker 1: father figure in her late teens who seems to have
Speaker 1: been a lot more important to her. Yeah, she had
Speaker 1: some issues with her mom. Uh, we can talk more
Speaker 1: about some of those in her behind the scenes. But
Speaker 1: soon after Sonora left school, the family moved to Savannah.
Speaker 1: This was kind of on a whim of her mother's
Speaker 1: when she saw listing for a home that sounded charming,
Speaker 1: and off they went. There is no mention again of
Speaker 1: her father and it seems that her mother at this
Speaker 1: point was raising the kids entirely on her own. This
Speaker 1: was one of a series of spontaneous moves that the
Speaker 1: family had over the years. Sonora, whose siblings were at
Speaker 1: this point all school age, was desperate to strike out
Speaker 1: on her own, largely because she was tired of her
Speaker 1: mother's desires determining her fate. It was actually Sonora's mother
Speaker 1: that found the route to freedom for her daughter in right,
Speaker 1: So anytime you see any sort of abbreviated story of
Speaker 1: Sonora's life, it is often told that she saw the
Speaker 1: following listing in the Savannah paper and immediately went to
Speaker 1: see dot Carver and that ad read wanted attractive young
Speaker 1: woman who can swim and dive, likes horses, desires to
Speaker 1: travel see Dr W F. Carver Savannah Hotel. She did
Speaker 1: see that ad, but it was her mother who had
Speaker 1: brought it to her attention, and according to Sonora's autobiography,
Speaker 1: she did not immediately jump at the idea. Her response
Speaker 1: to her mother suggesting that she would be perfect for
Speaker 1: this horse diving job was quote me, dive on a horse, mother,
Speaker 1: You've lost your mind. She insisted that she did not
Speaker 1: want to meet Carver or any of the people in
Speaker 1: his company. I love I love her mother. You've lost
Speaker 1: your minds. Her mother's ongoing pestering, though, led Sonora to
Speaker 1: the Savannah Hotel one Wednesday evening, and she did meet
Speaker 1: with Dr Carver, his son Alan, his daughter Lorena, and
Speaker 1: a stunt woman named Vivian who was working with the
Speaker 1: family at the time. Sonora thought Dr Carver, who was
Speaker 1: eighty four at this point, was quote the most distinguished
Speaker 1: man I had ever met. But even then, when Carver
Speaker 1: offered her a job on the spot, Sonora didn't take it.
Speaker 1: She turned him down. She explained the whole visit had
Speaker 1: just been to appease her mother and that she didn't
Speaker 1: see a life for herself as part of a traveling
Speaker 1: horse act. But instead of abandoning the thought entirely, Sonora
Speaker 1: Webster whipped to the fair and watched that diving horse act,
Speaker 1: and she was, in her own word, spell bound. She
Speaker 1: described the scene quote, A girl in a red bathing suit,
Speaker 1: brown football helmet, and white sneaker sat on a railing
Speaker 1: at the top of the tower, looking intently down a
Speaker 1: steep ramp. In a moment, she gave a signal with
Speaker 1: her hand, and instantly there came the sound of a
Speaker 1: horse's hoofs hitting the runway, and as she galloped past,
Speaker 1: the girl on the railing jumped on. They drew up
Speaker 1: together at the head of the platform, where there was
Speaker 1: a drop off, and the horse stood for a moment
Speaker 1: like a beautiful statue. She hung for a moment at
Speaker 1: an almost perpendicular angle, and then pushed away from the
Speaker 1: boards and lunged outward into space. For a split second,
Speaker 1: her form was imprinted on the night sky like a silhouette.
Speaker 1: Then her beautiful body arched gracefully over and down and
Speaker 1: plunged into the tank. We'll talk about how witnessing horse
Speaker 1: diving changed Sonora's mind and her life after we take
Speaker 1: a quick sponsor break. So, after watching horse diving for herself,
Speaker 1: Sonora decided that she did in fact want to take
Speaker 1: Carver up on his offer. But by the time she
Speaker 1: came to this decision, the Carver Show was getting ready
Speaker 1: to leave Savannah the following morning. She dressed as quickly
Speaker 1: as she could, she skipped breakfast, and she rushed to
Speaker 1: the hotel in the hopes of intercepting Dot Carver and
Speaker 1: his company before they left town. And in her autobiography
Speaker 1: she mentioned she could never recall their exact conversation, but
Speaker 1: she knew she did not make clear to them that
Speaker 1: she wanted to join their show, and they kind of
Speaker 1: had some sort of talk, and then they left without her.
Speaker 1: Three months later, though, dot Carver wrote her a letter
Speaker 1: restating his offer, quote, if you still want to learn
Speaker 1: to ride the diving horses, reply at this address. So
Speaker 1: she did, and then she waited and waited and waited,
Speaker 1: and after several weeks he appeared in person in Savannah
Speaker 1: and asked how soon Sonora could leave. She was given
Speaker 1: us salary of fifty dollars a week, and that was
Speaker 1: more than triple what she had been earning as a
Speaker 1: department store bookkeeper in Savannah. Yes, she had kind of
Speaker 1: been making a life for her own. She had moved
Speaker 1: out of the family house and into a boarding house.
Speaker 1: But this suddenly seemed like riches and they get to
Speaker 1: ride horses. Um. So she soon found herself alongside the
Speaker 1: rest of Carver's crew in Jacksonville, Florida. That's where they
Speaker 1: were spending the winter months prepping for the next season,
Speaker 1: and she saw how they cared for the horses. Doc's son,
Speaker 1: Alan was in charge of their day to day care
Speaker 1: and managing the groomers that they hired. Duc's daughter, Lorena,
Speaker 1: was a trick rider, but she had injured a muscle
Speaker 1: in her leg and she was not ready to perform
Speaker 1: again yet. Sonora had to learn how to ride bareback,
Speaker 1: which was entirely new to her and very challenging. That
Speaker 1: left her bruised all over her legs, and when she
Speaker 1: got smacked by a horse moving its head and got
Speaker 1: a bloody nose, Dot Carver made it clear that she
Speaker 1: was the one at fault. She really bristled at that,
Speaker 1: but she took the lesson to always be full, so
Speaker 1: she continued to exercise the horses and practice riding and
Speaker 1: develop her relationships with the animals. It was a while, though,
Speaker 1: before she got to the diving part. When they finally
Speaker 1: started touring, they would have to set up their entire
Speaker 1: diving platform and pool system in each location, so they
Speaker 1: would dig out tanks from the ground that were forty
Speaker 1: five ft long, twenty five ft wide, and eleven feet deep.
Speaker 1: Doc Carver and his son had experimented to find that
Speaker 1: right depth. It sounds so shallow to me, but uh
Speaker 1: their experiments when they had tried deeper pools, led to
Speaker 1: them discovering that the horses couldn't really get to touch
Speaker 1: bottom on those. They were a little too buoyant, and
Speaker 1: they did better if they could get into the water,
Speaker 1: kind of hit the bottom with their hoofs, and then
Speaker 1: push off to come up out of the water head first.
Speaker 1: Otherwise they might roll in the water and get disoriented.
Speaker 1: So their standard tank size, which they had developed, was
Speaker 1: lined with canvas, and it held an estimated thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand gallons of water par some of the um. The
Speaker 1: humans also would just swim in it for exercise. They
Speaker 1: also included an incline on one end, so once the
Speaker 1: horses got out of the water or righted themselves in
Speaker 1: the water, they could essentially walk right up that ramp
Speaker 1: and out of the pool when they were done with
Speaker 1: the stunt. Above the tank was a tower which reached
Speaker 1: forty feet in height. It had a long ramp at
Speaker 1: the back for the horses to make their ascent and
Speaker 1: a ladder for the divers. The divers didn't mount the
Speaker 1: horses until they were right on top of the tower
Speaker 1: before the dive. The tower also had to be lit,
Speaker 1: since they gave shows day and night, but they also
Speaker 1: had to position that lighting really carefully to prevent reflections
Speaker 1: on the water which would scare the horses. All of
Speaker 1: this digging and construction and lighting was overseen by Doc
Speaker 1: and Alan, but it was always at the expense of
Speaker 1: the fair or event that had booked the show. Doc
Speaker 1: made sure that that was always in the contract. It
Speaker 1: does sound like quite a lot of work and money.
Speaker 1: It does. There where some of the discussions she talks
Speaker 1: about in her book was that they weren't really making
Speaker 1: that much money because even though they had made these arrangements,
Speaker 1: they spent so much money traveling and getting the horses
Speaker 1: and all of this equipment moved around that by the
Speaker 1: time they got to their next destination in their next booking,
Speaker 1: they were almost out of cash. Sonora also had to
Speaker 1: learn to just dive herself, because sometimes they included trick
Speaker 1: dives in their shows as well as diving with the horses.
Speaker 1: There was a lower platform on the tower that was
Speaker 1: twelve feet up instead of going right from that forty
Speaker 1: ft uh platform, and that was used for both humans
Speaker 1: and horses to learn their diving in practice, and part
Speaker 1: of Sonora's training was being taught that she would. Initially,
Speaker 1: when she started diving horses, always feel as though the
Speaker 1: horse was going to somersault forward as it leaned forward
Speaker 1: on its ramp off the diving board, but that it
Speaker 1: was not going to and she needed to resist the
Speaker 1: urge to react physically to it. Soon she was diving
Speaker 1: with the horses with Alan, who she called Al as
Speaker 1: her coach. She later wrote, quote, as Al coached me,
Speaker 1: the odds between me and the hospital seemed to get smaller.
Speaker 1: She kept practicing, and soon she was deemed ready for
Speaker 1: a full height jump from the forty ft platform, but
Speaker 1: she didn't train at that height. Dot Carver had decided
Speaker 1: her first high platform jump would be in front of
Speaker 1: an audience. Sonora describes going kind of numb as she
Speaker 1: walked to the tower and started climbing for that jump,
Speaker 1: which was in front of thousands of spectators in Durham,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, but also feeling completely confident and at ease
Speaker 1: once she finally got up there. She later wrote of
Speaker 1: that first high dive quote, I felt his muscles tense
Speaker 1: as his big body sprang out and down, and then
Speaker 1: had an entirely new feeling. It was a wild, almost
Speaker 1: primitive thrill that comes only with complete freedom of contact
Speaker 1: with the earth. Then I saw the water rushing up
Speaker 1: at me, and the next moment we were in the tank.
Speaker 1: We went in so smoothly that the wetness seemed the
Speaker 1: only proof of landing. Also wrote of horses diving in general, quote,
Speaker 1: the physical, holy, sensual pleasure that comes with a drop
Speaker 1: from the tower down to the tank is a pleasure
Speaker 1: totally lacking in psychological or philosophical meaning. It's the sheer
Speaker 1: exhilaration of being entirely free of the earth as well
Speaker 1: as everything human. To me, no other physical sensation can
Speaker 1: be so acute, so deeply intoxicating. Sonora started giving multiple
Speaker 1: shows a day as she was the only writer. The
Speaker 1: team split up and Al took two of the horses
Speaker 1: onto another booking so they could bring in more money.
Speaker 1: Dot Carver trained another young woman to send along with
Speaker 1: that group while he and Sonora stayed in Durham since
Speaker 1: Lorena was still unable to ride. Once Lorena was fully healed,
Speaker 1: she literally got back on the horse as the sub
Speaker 1: writer was not as good as Al and Doc had hoped.
Speaker 1: Yeah the person they had sent along to that other booking,
Speaker 1: they determined did not really have the nerve to do
Speaker 1: this job long term, so Lorena went to meet up
Speaker 1: with her brother. At this point, Sonora was earning a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five dollars a week during the busy
Speaker 1: touring season, and she was often interviewed and photographed by press.
Speaker 1: She made sure, she would later say, to not get
Speaker 1: a big head about it and to remember that they
Speaker 1: were really there for the act and not for her.
Speaker 1: Throughout their time working together, it seems that Doc took
Speaker 1: on a sort of taskmaster fatherly role in Sonora's life,
Speaker 1: and she was really devoted to him. And this was
Speaker 1: even something that played out in the press, where Sonora
Speaker 1: was billed as Sonora Carver and reporters interviewed her so
Speaker 1: called father, Dr Carver dot Carver would spend all kinds
Speaker 1: of tales about how nervous he had been to let
Speaker 1: his little girl ride, but he couldn't keep her away
Speaker 1: from horses. So no doubt this was all intended to
Speaker 1: stir up interest around this idea of a worried dad
Speaker 1: and his daredevil daughter to sell tickets. Yeah, the first
Speaker 1: of these articles I found, I got really excited because
Speaker 1: they talked about her father being nervous and I'm like
Speaker 1: they found her father, and it was like, oh no,
Speaker 1: this was a ruse. As they toured, Doc, who was
Speaker 1: in his eighties, needed her more and more just to
Speaker 1: handle many of the tasks of everyday life on the road.
Speaker 1: He seemed like he just grew really attached to her
Speaker 1: and wanted her around to help him with things, and
Speaker 1: he always wanted her to travel with him. Throughout nineteen seven,
Speaker 1: his health had really declined. They had reluctantly gotten him
Speaker 1: to go to the hospital at one point while he
Speaker 1: and Sonora were traveling, which he did not like uh
Speaker 1: and eventually got out of and made clear he probably
Speaker 1: wasn't going to follow doctor's orders. And on August thirty one,
Speaker 1: he died after he and Sonora had met up with
Speaker 1: Al and Lorena and Sacramento for a booking, and a
Speaker 1: lot of his obituaries list Sonora Carver as his daughter.
Speaker 1: There had already been some discussion of Alan taking over
Speaker 1: his father's road show, so the transition in that regard
Speaker 1: was pretty smooth. In accordance with Doc's wishes, they didn't
Speaker 1: pause their performance schedule. They shipped his body to Winslow,
Speaker 1: Illinois to be interred. While they went on for the
Speaker 1: Sacramento contract. Under Al stewardship, the act changed a little bit.
Speaker 1: So whereas Doc had always insisted on fairly conservative, plain
Speaker 1: red swimsuits with the most modest cuts available, no adornment,
Speaker 1: and plain bathrobes, I'll let the performers choose their own outfits.
Speaker 1: So Sonora and Lorena at a different colored suits with
Speaker 1: some spangles stitched onto them, and more glamorous robes with
Speaker 1: embroidered backs. There's a great description where she talks about
Speaker 1: Lorena giving her a robe that she had embroidered with
Speaker 1: a peacock on the back and how much she loved
Speaker 1: it and it felt like the most glamorous garments she
Speaker 1: had ever worn. They also started traveling by car instead
Speaker 1: of by train, although initially the horses still needed to
Speaker 1: be shipped by train while they sought out the perfect
Speaker 1: trailer for them. When Lorena decided to retire from performing
Speaker 1: to manage the second touring group, Sonora's sister Arnett joined
Speaker 1: as her replacement. And this is something that Sonora really
Speaker 1: thought long and hard about. She knew the dangers involved
Speaker 1: with this work. They had ever had a horse get injured,
Speaker 1: but riders definitely had everything from bloody noses too, fractured
Speaker 1: bones and teeth being knocked out, and a stunt man
Speaker 1: from the movie industry had begged Dot Carver to let
Speaker 1: him try out horse diving and had actually broken his
Speaker 1: neck and died on his first dive. But Sonora also
Speaker 1: knew that Arnette craved adventure in the same way that
Speaker 1: she did. She ultimately decided that at least if Arnette
Speaker 1: was with her, she could teach her how to be
Speaker 1: as safe as possible and might save her from making
Speaker 1: more dangerous choices with her life. Al also acquired a
Speaker 1: paint horse named Red Lips during this time that was
Speaker 1: known for being incredibly obstinate. This is another great story
Speaker 1: in her book about the farmer that owned him, being like,
Speaker 1: I'm not selling this horse. He might be satan. He
Speaker 1: had apparently tried to sell him and he kept getting
Speaker 1: returned uh Sonora, and although both fell in love with
Speaker 1: this horse and they learned to negotiate with his temperament.
Speaker 1: They even got him a baby as a pet to
Speaker 1: make him happy, which seemed to work. And Sonora's devotion
Speaker 1: to this particular horse would end up costing her greatly,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in a bit. Uh He was
Speaker 1: a good diver, but he was a little bit dangerous
Speaker 1: because he likes to do what they call nose diving,
Speaker 1: meaning that he went into the water at an almost
Speaker 1: vertical angle straight in, rather than at a slant like
Speaker 1: most of the horses. Simultaneously, the relationship shifted between Al
Speaker 1: and Sonora. They had worked together for years, but once
Speaker 1: they were working alone together, they got closer and closer
Speaker 1: over time, and they fell in love. She later wrote
Speaker 1: quote Al says he loved me from the beginning and
Speaker 1: that he had told himself soon after we met, someday
Speaker 1: I'm going to marry her, which is very flattering, but
Speaker 1: from my viewpoint, open to argument, she's pretty funny. Uh.
Speaker 1: Al did eventually openly profess his love for Sonora, and
Speaker 1: that actually made her feel kind of conflicted. She really
Speaker 1: liked him too, but she had also seen bad mayor DGEs.
Speaker 1: This is the one time she mentions her parents conflicted marriage,
Speaker 1: and even in good marriages, it seemed to her like
Speaker 1: the love eventually withered, or that having kids created this
Speaker 1: constant financial stress of having to provide for them. She
Speaker 1: liked being single, and she told Alice much, but Eventually
Speaker 1: she did agree to marry him. She was still a
Speaker 1: little bit unsure about it even as she said her vows.
Speaker 1: But after the quick morning ceremony that they had Al
Speaker 1: told her quote, I'll see to it that you're never sorry,
Speaker 1: and then they got back to work. They actually had
Speaker 1: a show to do that afternoon. A week later, Al
Speaker 1: gave Sonora a present that she said many brides would
Speaker 1: not have wanted but was quote the perfect one for me,
Speaker 1: A contract for a season's engagement at the Atlantic City
Speaker 1: Steel Pier. This meant not only more stability and less
Speaker 1: constant travel, but also a custom built tank and tower.
Speaker 1: The humans also had actual dressing rooms, and the horses
Speaker 1: had dedicated stall space. Our Nett's summer of horse diving
Speaker 1: had not gone spectacularly well. They had sent her home,
Speaker 1: but she begged to come to Atlantic City to see
Speaker 1: if there wasn't something else she could do, and Sonora
Speaker 1: and Al finally acquiesced to her repeated requests. On this,
Speaker 1: Sonora found Our Network as part of a swimming, diving,
Speaker 1: and water skiing act that was also contracted to appear
Speaker 1: at the pier, and for the next several summers, the
Speaker 1: sisters got to work together in Atlantic City, and they
Speaker 1: actually saw people that intersect with some of our other shows,
Speaker 1: like Johnny weiss Miller and John Philip Sousa as they
Speaker 1: came through on bookings as well. In one Sonora was
Speaker 1: performing a jump with her horse, Red Lips, when he
Speaker 1: went more aggressively vertical than usual. She was afraid that
Speaker 1: leaning forward to tuck her head next to his neck,
Speaker 1: which they normally did for safety, would cause him to
Speaker 1: just roll forward really dangerously, so she held her weight
Speaker 1: back to keep their balance, and as she later wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: I was successful, but that position caused me to strike
Speaker 1: the water flat on my face instead of diving in
Speaker 1: at the top of my head, and the excitement of
Speaker 1: the moment, I had failed to close my eyes quickly enough,
Speaker 1: and as we hit I felt a dull, stinging sensation.
Speaker 1: She stayed on the horse's back and wrote him out
Speaker 1: of the water, and although it had been rough, she
Speaker 1: thought she was okay. But back in her dressing room
Speaker 1: she told Al quote, I feel as if I were
Speaker 1: trying to peer through fog. Al wanted her to go
Speaker 1: to a doctor, but instead she went back out for
Speaker 1: the second show and two shows the next day. Things
Speaker 1: seemed to be getting better, and she wasn't in any pain,
Speaker 1: so she thought she was fine. But as those foggy
Speaker 1: patches disappeared, she found at first that her vision had
Speaker 1: a yellow cast to it, but she still kept writing
Speaker 1: because again there was no pain. And then several days
Speaker 1: later she had what she described as a smoky gray
Speaker 1: curtain to her vision, which finally caused her to acknowledge
Speaker 1: her own fear over what was happening, but she still
Speaker 1: wrote again. That night, she wrote quote, I was also
Speaker 1: protecting my pride. No one had ever had to take
Speaker 1: place on my horse, and no one was going to.
Speaker 1: When she finally went to the doctor, she was diagnosed
Speaker 1: with detached retina's. The doctor hoped that he could save
Speaker 1: the site in her right eye, but he was frank
Speaker 1: that her left eye was beyond help. She had surgery,
Speaker 1: but the results were not what they had hoped for.
Speaker 1: They tried additional procedures but had the same result. Sonora's
Speaker 1: remaining site got worse, not better, and she became completely blind,
Speaker 1: as she described it quote enveloped in folds of soft
Speaker 1: black velvet. We will talk about how Sonora came through
Speaker 1: this period of convalescence, which was really difficult for someone
Speaker 1: who was so constantly active. But first we're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick break for award from the sponsors to
Speaker 1: keep stuff you missed in history class going. In her autobiography,
Speaker 1: Sonora describes really frankly her mental journey during her time
Speaker 1: convalescing and eventually accepting what was happening to her. She
Speaker 1: has this really long description of how the word blind
Speaker 1: started appearing in her mind. First, it's just a pinpoint
Speaker 1: of light that she refused to acknowledge, and over several days,
Speaker 1: eventually becoming larger and legible. And when she finally acknowledged
Speaker 1: this word, she experienced what she described as a sense
Speaker 1: of relief at finally naming her situation, but also panic.
Speaker 1: And then, as she put it, a voice came to
Speaker 1: her that said, quote, you know you'll never see again,
Speaker 1: will you let it ruin your life? She said no
Speaker 1: to that, uh, And then several days later she heard
Speaker 1: what she believed to be the voice of God saying quote,
Speaker 1: don't be afraid you will see. She interpreted that to
Speaker 1: mean a greater mental vision and not the return of
Speaker 1: her actual eyesight, and she spent several days assessing her
Speaker 1: relationship with the world around her. In this new state,
Speaker 1: she wrote, quote, I decided that the best strategy I
Speaker 1: could adopt would be to treat my blindness as if
Speaker 1: it were a minor detail rather than a major catastrophe.
Speaker 1: I would thus be turning the tables on my handicap,
Speaker 1: in fact striking it. It's very potency. I was careful, however,
Speaker 1: not to delude myself. The way would not be easy.
Speaker 1: The independence that had always been part of her personality
Speaker 1: for her entire life really came into play here. She
Speaker 1: very quickly grew tired of Al and her sister Arnett
Speaker 1: trying to take care of her. She felt like she
Speaker 1: was being babied and she hated it. So she just
Speaker 1: started trying to do things herself to see how it went.
Speaker 1: And she started with bathing, which she was really proud
Speaker 1: the first time she was able to like manage getting
Speaker 1: bathed herself. She's like, this is not something I can't do.
Speaker 1: She also found that she didn't want any help at
Speaker 1: all soon, and the only thing that she let Al
Speaker 1: do for her was cut her meat at meals. She
Speaker 1: actually felt fine doing it, but it made him really
Speaker 1: really nervous to watch her with a knife, so she
Speaker 1: eventually gave in and just let him handle it, and
Speaker 1: she also went along with his desire to hire a
Speaker 1: cook for them. Does the casual socialization of life was
Speaker 1: this whole other fight, though. She found the way she
Speaker 1: was treated was really frustrating, and she wrote about it quote.
Speaker 1: The attitude of over protection towards the blind, not infrequent
Speaker 1: among the sided, often can be more of a handicapped
Speaker 1: than blindness itself, and one of the most damaging aspects
Speaker 1: is the continual effort to help the blind person physically
Speaker 1: at the expense of the blind person's feelings. She lived
Speaker 1: in her head a lot in her initial days without vision,
Speaker 1: learning brail was something that actually really delighted her. She
Speaker 1: talks about the tutor that someone found for her being
Speaker 1: just an absolute breath of fresh air during this time,
Speaker 1: because it meant that she could read to pass the time,
Speaker 1: instead of only being in her thoughts or also having
Speaker 1: to constantly explain to people that really she was perfectly
Speaker 1: able to dress herself without assistance. When Atlantic City chose
Speaker 1: to renew the contract with al for another summer, Sonora's
Speaker 1: first reaction was frustration she would be left at home
Speaker 1: and on a well to be part of this, and
Speaker 1: this was something that had been her source of joy
Speaker 1: for years. And then she pitched the idea of diving
Speaker 1: again to her doctor, and to everybody's surprise, he said
Speaker 1: it was okay as long as she wore a helmet.
Speaker 1: Sonora knew that as long as she could get on
Speaker 1: the horse, the rest of it would be relatively easy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at that point, wearing helmets had kind of fallen out
Speaker 1: of favor. But she's like, I'll go back to the helmet.
Speaker 1: That's not a problem. She was super excited that she
Speaker 1: could even possibly do this, So first she practiced climbing
Speaker 1: to get used to the ladder again, and al rigged
Speaker 1: a rope that ran from the dressing room out to
Speaker 1: the tower so she had a guide if she needed it.
Speaker 1: She talks about how she was too prideful to ever
Speaker 1: actually put her hand on the rope. She would just
Speaker 1: feel the fringe of her robe hitting it, and that's
Speaker 1: what she used to guide herself. She wrote, quote, I
Speaker 1: felt that if I rode well, I needed no excuse,
Speaker 1: and that if I needed an excuse, I had no
Speaker 1: business riding. I tried in every possible way to play
Speaker 1: down the melodramatics refusing to allow any publicity. Finally, in
Speaker 1: June of ninety two, she had all her equipment and
Speaker 1: practiced walking to the tower and climbing to the platform,
Speaker 1: and she was ready to try her first jump. The
Speaker 1: days leading up to that first jump, multiple acts that
Speaker 1: were part of the pier show had all had accidents,
Speaker 1: including a fatality in the trapeze act that had taken
Speaker 1: the life of a woman who had really been one
Speaker 1: of Sonora's close friends. When the primary dive rider was
Speaker 1: suddenly called away, Sonora felt like she had to fill
Speaker 1: her spot, and she put aside the fears that had
Speaker 1: been brought up by all those other accidents around her.
Speaker 1: I told her she could call off the show, but
Speaker 1: she insisted that she thought she was ready. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is like a super strange time because these were all
Speaker 1: accident had been contracted year after year, and they were
Speaker 1: all normally they were in like clockwork, incredibly safe, so
Speaker 1: it was very strange that several of them had accidents
Speaker 1: clustered right together. But she made her first dive on
Speaker 1: that same horse that had led to her injury red Lips,
Speaker 1: and that first dive went perfectly. Sonora immediately returned to
Speaker 1: her old performing schedule and started making multiple dives each day,
Speaker 1: and she did this for eleven more years. She was
Speaker 1: very frank that some of her dives had problems. It
Speaker 1: was not always as great as that first return effort,
Speaker 1: and they were actually four times she missed the horse
Speaker 1: completely when she tried to mount. Initially, no one but
Speaker 1: her family and fellow performers even knew that she had
Speaker 1: lost her sight. The audience was completely clueless. She had
Speaker 1: learned to basically turn to them and wave like it
Speaker 1: was completely normal. They didn't know that she couldn't see them. Eventually,
Speaker 1: word did get out that Sonora was blind, and a
Speaker 1: reporter convinced her to let him write a story about it,
Speaker 1: and this led to a new path for her. She
Speaker 1: had initially really hated the idea of publicity around her blindness,
Speaker 1: but soon she realized that her story might help other
Speaker 1: people hope in similar situations, and her feelings about it
Speaker 1: really changed entirely. Yes, she after that was very open
Speaker 1: about it and perfectly willing to talk about it with
Speaker 1: the press. But Sonora Webster Carver gave her last show
Speaker 1: in ninety two. At that point, they were not at
Speaker 1: the pier at Atlantic City anymore. They had started touring again,
Speaker 1: but World War Two had made it really, really hard
Speaker 1: to get the workers that they needed in all of
Speaker 1: their various locations to maintain the horses and dig the
Speaker 1: tank and set up the tower. So they decided that
Speaker 1: it was really time to retire. Sonora described it as
Speaker 1: all of them red Lips in her and al being
Speaker 1: put out to pasture. Red Lips lived out the remainder
Speaker 1: of his life in Houston with friends of the Carvers.
Speaker 1: The Carvers relocated to New Orleans, Louisiana. They didn't really retire, though,
Speaker 1: I'll take a job as a motel clerk, and Sonora
Speaker 1: became a typist at the Lighthouse for the Blind. Arnett
Speaker 1: married a man named Jacob French, who she had met
Speaker 1: at the pier in nine, and she moved to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty one, Sonora published an autobiography titled A
Speaker 1: Girl and Five Brave Horses. I used it as one
Speaker 1: of my resources this and it is an absolute delight
Speaker 1: of a read because she was a fantastic storyteller and
Speaker 1: she was very funny. In nineteen seventy nine, after working
Speaker 1: as both the typist and an advocate for the blind
Speaker 1: through Lighthouse for the Blind. Carver retired and in a
Speaker 1: Disney film was made that was based on her life
Speaker 1: story called Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken, which is how
Speaker 1: I absolutely already knew Sonora Carber was when Nallie told
Speaker 1: me she was considering this episode. According to her sister Arnette, though,
Speaker 1: when Sonora went to the movie, she was really disappointed
Speaker 1: and how they changed things around. She told our Nette quote,
Speaker 1: the only thing true in it is that I rode
Speaker 1: diving horses, I went blind, and I continued to ride
Speaker 1: for another eleven years. And part of what bothered her
Speaker 1: so much was having her return to horse diving after
Speaker 1: the accident portrayed as this huge challenge in this fear
Speaker 1: that she had to overcome, when really that had been
Speaker 1: all she had wanted to do, and it at her
Speaker 1: really happy to be able to get back into it.
Speaker 1: Sonora also lived long enough to see horse diving finally
Speaker 1: and as an entertainment in the nineteen seventies due to
Speaker 1: animal welfare concerns. Well before Sonora Webster joined Dot Carver's show,
Speaker 1: the group was already under a lot of scrutiny from
Speaker 1: the Society for the Prevention of cruelty to animals. According
Speaker 1: to Sonora's account, veterinarians from the spc A would stop
Speaker 1: by to inspect the horses, but they were always satisfied
Speaker 1: with their condition and their care. At one point on
Speaker 1: the tour, this landed Dot Carver in court when an
Speaker 1: order had been issued to stop the performances until an
Speaker 1: investigation could be made. Doc took one of the horses
Speaker 1: right to the courthouse to have the judge examine it,
Speaker 1: and the case was thrown out. There was also a
Speaker 1: brief effort to bring a diving mule show to the
Speaker 1: Steel Peer in the nineteen nineties that was quickly shut
Speaker 1: down after protests over animal rights. People who participated in
Speaker 1: horse diving are really quick to point out the level
Speaker 1: of care that the Carver horses always received and that
Speaker 1: while there were human injuries and even the fatality we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, the horses did not get hurt during dives,
Speaker 1: and they would quickly remove a horse from their training
Speaker 1: program if it appeared to have any nervousness or reluctance
Speaker 1: about jumping. There was, though, something we should point out,
Speaker 1: which is that one horse fatality took place in n
Speaker 1: when Doc Carver was still alive, but not on site.
Speaker 1: One of the booked venues insisted on using the open
Speaker 1: water as the landing instead of a tank, and without
Speaker 1: Doc around to say no, the crew went along with it,
Speaker 1: and the horse made the jump just fine, but it
Speaker 1: got disoriented in this open body of water and it
Speaker 1: swam in a panic into deeper water, where it became
Speaker 1: exhausted and drowned. Carver was, by Sonora's account, both angry
Speaker 1: and heartbroken at this and ended the contract and never
Speaker 1: worked with that venue again. Yeah. She described in her
Speaker 1: book that she had never seen him that upset and
Speaker 1: never did again. But regardless of whether the horses and
Speaker 1: Carver Show were happy or not, the time for animal
Speaker 1: acts of this nature is clearly passed, as most animal
Speaker 1: protection groups denounced the use of animals and entertainment. The
Speaker 1: future of circuses, for example, is often in the news,
Speaker 1: and it's likely animal free or switching to virtual animals
Speaker 1: created using projection, which has opened up an entirely new
Speaker 1: area of artistry. If you go hunting for any of
Speaker 1: those videos online, they're quite cool. So a resurgence of
Speaker 1: horse diving seems entirely unlikely, but you can if you
Speaker 1: want to see it find a couple of videos online
Speaker 1: that show Carver and other stunt rider's horse diving Sonora Webster.
Speaker 1: Carver died in September of two thousand three in Pleasantville,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, at the age of nine. Do you have
Speaker 1: some listener mail for us? I do. I actually have
Speaker 1: several pieces of listener mail, because they're all related to
Speaker 1: do Konamoku and they're all pretty short. Um. The first
Speaker 1: one I will say is from our listener, Susan, who
Speaker 1: writes Aloha the behind the scenes episode for Duke Kahanamoku,
Speaker 1: where you talk about that this is your life host
Speaker 1: pronouncing Hawaii with the W sounding like a V. You
Speaker 1: do know that in the Hawaiian language, the V sound
Speaker 1: is the correct way to say the W in the
Speaker 1: word Hawaii, right, because the mistake is not educating people
Speaker 1: about the Hawaiian language and not the host using the
Speaker 1: correct Hawaiian pronunciation of Hawaii. No grimace needed. It sounds
Speaker 1: so much the way like someone would say a Bavarian
Speaker 1: V to me that I think that's why I recoiled
Speaker 1: a bit. I do know that does sometimes subout, but
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that that was normally the preferred pronunciation
Speaker 1: of Hawaii. But this has, of course, um inspired me
Speaker 1: to start taking Hawaiian lessons in du a lingo. I
Speaker 1: have not seen the this is your life that we
Speaker 1: were talking about, um, and so I had interpreted it
Speaker 1: as like the cringe e over pronunciation things people do
Speaker 1: like it is to me, Yeah, as though we were
Speaker 1: talking about Paris and we kept saying Paris every time,
Speaker 1: like that's how that is exactly how it vibes to me.
Speaker 1: But again, I'm not a I'm certainly not a Hawaiian speaker.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if she has seen that footage
Speaker 1: or not. But um uh. If she says I don't
Speaker 1: have to cringe, that's a huge relief. Um. The next
Speaker 1: one is from our listener Alana. Again it's fairly short.
Speaker 1: Uh made me laugh so and it's about laughing, so
Speaker 1: that's great, she writes, High Holly and Tracy, thank you
Speaker 1: for the two parter and mini on the Great Duke Kahanamoku.
Speaker 1: I have to let you know I was listening to
Speaker 1: you while driving and when you mentioned the way he
Speaker 1: messed with journalists about the pronunciation of his name, I
Speaker 1: had to pull over because I was laughing so hard.
Speaker 1: I cried like sobbing tears and kept starting up again,
Speaker 1: just imagining their faces. I haven't liked laughed like that
Speaker 1: in at least a year, So thank you. I also
Speaker 1: love that he woke up from a nap, then a
Speaker 1: few minutes later one an Olympic race, when after I
Speaker 1: wake up, I am useless for about half an hour.
Speaker 1: What a man. Thank you for such a good time.
Speaker 1: I've been a very long time listener and you never
Speaker 1: disappoint Uh. That delighted me. I have anytime. Laughing makes
Speaker 1: you pull over, and thank you for pulling over for
Speaker 1: safety makes me please. Our last one is from Christine,
Speaker 1: who writes, after listening to last week's episodes, I wonder
Speaker 1: if it's possible Duke had an ecilepsy. I don't think so,
Speaker 1: because he didn't seem to have trouble staying awake when
Speaker 1: he was like doing something. Uh. Normally people with an
Speaker 1: ecalepsy just not off when they are not planning to.
Speaker 1: He just seemed to be much more of an advantageous napper,
Speaker 1: like I got a minute, I can lie down, and yeah,
Speaker 1: the only nap in that story that's that raised my
Speaker 1: eyebrows in that regard at all. Was the filling asleep
Speaker 1: underwater one, Yeah, which still to me was more about
Speaker 1: his like his comfort level in the water than something
Speaker 1: that that was potentially an illness. Yeah. He seemed to
Speaker 1: be so completely relaxed that when he was, as you
Speaker 1: recalling that story, he was in expecting the pilings for
Speaker 1: piers under water and had a counterpart above ground that
Speaker 1: would go to the end of the pier and they
Speaker 1: would communicate back and forth, and then that person would
Speaker 1: run to the next one. And I think he thought,
Speaker 1: I'm faster than him. I have a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to arrest my eyes. Yeah, just as
Speaker 1: a as a general rule on the show, we also
Speaker 1: just try not to armshair diagnose people because we're not doctors,
Speaker 1: and even if we were doctors, the person is not
Speaker 1: here to examine. So I did a little digging after
Speaker 1: this email to see if there had been any like
Speaker 1: medical historians who had made that conjecture, and I definitely
Speaker 1: did not find any. No. Uh, yeah, no one in
Speaker 1: his family ever mentions like this, be like there being
Speaker 1: a moment where they're like, how is he asleep? They
Speaker 1: just knew that he would curl up and go to sleep. Right.
Speaker 1: He felt like he had a couple of minutes. So um,
Speaker 1: thank you though for your question. If you would like
Speaker 1: to write to us about Duke Kahanamoku or any other things, boy,
Speaker 1: I sure like those stories, you can do so at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also
Speaker 1: find us on social media at miss in History pretty
Speaker 1: much everywhere. If you would like to subscribe to the
Speaker 1: podcast and you haven't gotten around to it yet, no worries,
Speaker 1: You can do that right now if you wish. You
Speaker 1: can subscribe on the iHeart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever it is you're listening to podcasts. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I
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