BOLINGBROKE — Kip Dingler carries a legacy as the flesh and blood of Macon’s most famous circus family.

So, on weekends like this, when the circus comes to town, his memories walk an emotional high wire.

Ringling Brothers Circus will roll out its final show Sunday after a weekend under the big roof at the Macon Coliseum. This also marks the week of the anniversary of his father’s death. A.H. “Red” Dingler died on Jan. 2, 1982, after sustaining a massive heart attack at the old Dunn’s Hardware store on Emery Highway.

The Dinglers were circus people.

Step right up, to the greatest show on earth.

At a Ringling Brothers show in Macon a few years ago, Kip sat in the stands with his wife, Judy, and daughter, Carson. A group of Russian acrobats performed, and Kip got choked up as he watched them flying, leaping and tumbling through the air.

“They had red hair like my dad, acted just like my dad and were built just like him,” Kip said.

Now he turns back the pages of old scrapbooks to find his father. Red is pressed there, between the pages, springing back to life in yellowed newspaper clippings and photographs creased by the years.

There are playbills of the circuses he performed with -- King Brothers, Clyde Beatty and Cole Brothers, Hoxie Brothers and the Royal Wild West Circus. He shared marquees with performers like Hugo Zacchini, the human cannonball, and the Cristiani clan of bareback riders, often billed as the “royal family” of the circus kingdom.

In Kip’s backyard are the horizontal bars and trapeze the Dinglers once used to defy gravity in atmospheres across the South. Kip’s real name is Kipling, but his parents were never that formal. It’s short for a “kip-up” a gymnastic term for mounting a horizontal bar.

He has also kept the trampoline he bounced on as a kid, when he performed with his father, mother and older sister, Connie, in a different town almost every night during the spring, summer and fall. He started when he was 5 and, by the time he was 9, he was juggling and riding a unicycle.

It’s the same trampoline where his daughter, Carson, now 11 years old, took her first steps as an infant a decade ago. Kip often jokes that she was named after Carson & Barnes, a traveling circus now in its 74th year that boasts of having the largest big top tent in America.

(Carson, a sixth-grader at Tattnall Square Academy, is training to become a pole vaulter, like her dad, who was on the track team at the University of Florida. She works under the tutelage of Kip’s old coach, the legendary Charlie Polhamus of Fitzgerald.)

Kip may be 51 years old, but he can still get just as excited as a kid when he talks about the circus. Next year will mark the 30th year of Kip Dingler Productions, the float-making operation he took over when his father died.

Red Dingler’s circus legend has long been one of Macon’s most fascinating stories. In the old days, I’m sure a lot of dreamy-eyed youngsters ran their dull, No. 2 pencils across homework assignments and made overtures about running off to join the circus.

Those were mostly idle threats. But, when fate stepped in, Red Dingler stepped into the ring.

His full name was Aubrey Howard Dingler, although but he hated to be called that. The name “Red” was more natural, like his hair.

He grew up on Second Street, and his second home was the YMCA (now the Macon Health Club). It was there he learned gymnastics, acrobatics and tumbling from noted instructor E.G. Searcy.

The YMCA held its own local circus in town every year, and Red became one of its top performers. His first break in the circus business came when the famed Lang & Cravat acrobatic duo, which featured Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat (who both went on to acting careers), came to Macon’s Luther Williams Field for a performance. Cravat had injured his back, and the call went out to find a local replacement. Lancaster contacted Searcy at the YMCA, and Searcy recommended Red.

He performed with Lancaster and soon had a star on his dressing room door. He enlisted in the Army during World War II and did circus shows with the USO in the Philippines. After the war, he returned to Macon, worked at the local Coca-Cola bottling plant and was hired as an assistant instructor at the YMCA.

He also fell in love with Ann, a tennis player and straight-A student at Wesleyan College. She came from an aristocratic family in Augusta and married against the wishes of her parents. They didn’t want their beautiful and smart daughter to run off with a circus acrobat.

It was the beginning of a magical career, a livelihood that brought them lifelong friends. Most of the career was spent with King Brothers, which boarded in Macon’s Central City Park each winter.

From 1908 to 1956, other circus companies made the park their winter headquarters. Sun Brothers, Sparks, the Downie Brothers and others had an arrangement with city officials. The city furnished the facilities. In turn, the circus operated a free zoo and opened training sessions to the public.

The Dinglers often performed together, and Red was amazing to watch. He could whirl on the aerial bars five stories above the ground. Or do a flying somersault over the backs of five elephants.

When their children, Connie and Kip, came along, the Dinglers would take them on the road with them. Ann would tutor them, along with the children of some of the other circus employees. She also helped at the box office.

When Red left the circus, he began building floats after watching the annual Macon Christmas parade in 1957. He had worked with Disney in Anaheim, Calif., so he knew the trade. As the parade weaved through downtown, he was convinced he could do better.

“He said the reindeer on the floats looked like greyhounds with sticks in their heads,” Kip said, laughing.

When Red died 29 years ago this month, Kip returned home from the University of Florida and his mother pleaded with him to take over and continue his father’s business.

“She opened the big door down at Central City Park,” he said. “ My father had started this business before I was born. She cried and asked me not to let it die with him. It was his dream.”

And so he has continued it, along with other dreams.

He still takes Carson to the circus two or three times a year.

“She never knew my father,” he said. “So we will watch, and I will point out some of the things he could do.”

It’s a proud legacy. And now she’s a part of it, too.

Reach Gris at 744-4275 or gris@macon.com.