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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 9, 1993                   TAG: 9303090277
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: SARASOTA, FLA.                                LENGTH: Short

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TIGHTROPE CYCLIST MARIO WALLENDA DEAD OF AIDS

Mario Wallenda, 36, grandson of high-wire legend Karl Wallenda, died of AIDS on Friday at his Sarasota home.

Wallenda's mother, Carla, said her son wanted his cause of death made public.

"We all felt that so many people think it's somebody else's disease," she said. "Everybody should be aware."

Carla Wallenda said her son, 36, tested positive for the HIV virus in July 1990 after collapsing after a performance in Canada. He spent the next two months hospitalized in critical condition, she said.

Eventually, Mario Wallenda was well enough to come home to Sarasota, but he never performed again, Carla Wallenda said.

"He died in his home the way he wished," she said.

While most members of the Sarasota-based troupe were best known for walking the tightrope and building human pyramids, Mario Wallenda's specialty was riding his motorcycle inside a large steel-mesh globe perched on a high wire.

The acted was billed "The Globe of Death."

Carla Wallenda said her son did not know when or where he contracted AIDS.

But she said he told her that he had practiced unsafe sex several times while living in Reno, Nev., for two years during the mid-1980s.

"He'd been running around, partying and everything," she said.

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