Carla Wallenda, who spent seven decades with both her head and her feet in the clouds (or close to them) as a member of the Flying Wallendas aerial act, died on Saturday in Sarasota, Fla. The last surviving child of the family troupes founder, she was 85.
Her death was confirmed by her son, Rick Wallenda. No cause was given.
Ms. Wallenda made her high-wire debut when she was just six weeks old when my father rode the bicycle and my mother sat on his shoulders, holding me and introducing me to the public, she recalled in a Sarasota television interview in 2017.
Fatal accidents took the lives of family members, including her husband, but Ms. Wallenda continued to soar to new acrobatic heights. Her signature was a heart-stopping headstand on a sway pole a flexible steel shaft from a perch of 100 feet (later scaled down to 65 feet as she grew older).
Though weakened by diabetes and a chronic inflammatory lung disease (she stopped smoking in 2013), she continued to perform until she was 82.