BELLINGHAM - In 10 short years, budding street performer Caleb Kors grew into a real showman, a wunderkind whose life touched hundreds of people.
"I'd have people come up to me in the market," said his mother, Melanie Kors. "They'd tell me, 'I just had the most deep, intellectual and spiritual conversation with your child. Do you realize you have something special?' And I'd say, 'Oh yes, I do.'"
His accidental hanging death last week stunned Bellingham.
Caleb, who was often seen juggling and doing magic tricks at the Bellingham Farmers Market, was found in his room with a rope tangled around his neck Monday night, Jan. 9. By the time paramedics arrived, he had already suffered serious brain damage from a lack of oxygen.
That night he had been working on a costume with a lightweight rope, but exactly how it got wrapped around his neck remains a tragic mystery.
He was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center and died there the following evening. The death was officially ruled an accident Thursday evening by the King County Medical Examiner's Office.
Condolences and tributes came in from around the country, and the story was picked up by newspapers as far away as the United Kingdom.
"There were times I'd think, 'Oh my God, if I ever lost him it would just wreck the whole world,'" Melanie said. "You don't ever want to think that, and my worst fear came true.'"
From a young age, Caleb knew he was gifted in many ways. He started walking at eight months old, and before he turned 2 years old, he was riding his first bike.
"Literally the first day he started pedaling around on the bike, he stood up with one foot on the seat and was steering it with the other foot," Melanie said.
He lived on his trampoline, his mother said, and his backflips earned him his circus stage name: "Flip."
It was around the age of eight he discovered he wanted to be a showman. He loved to make people smile, and he knew he'd found his niche when he started training with the Bellingham Circus Guild.
During the next two years he learned to juggle clubs, glide on the trapeze and walk on stilts.
"You can teach a kid to juggle and to do acrobatics," said his teacher, who goes by the stage name Strangely Doesburg. "But you can't teach a kid to be a showman."
Caleb was a natural.
He had a way of reading crowds that most seasoned circus performers are still looking for, Doesburg said.
A YouTube video, titled "Flippin' Strangely," shows an act choreographed mostly by Caleb. Doesburg helped put the piece together, and student and teacher performed it as a duo.
"He was so voracious about learning, it kind of helped me hold onto that childlike sense of wonder," Doesburg said. "He made me 10 times better, because he saw me as 10 times better than I was."
Two weeks ago Caleb was walking in stilts around the Lookout Arts Quarry near Lake Samish during a lesson, said Blair Arvin, 14, a peer at the circus guild. Another student asked Caleb if he was afraid to fall off the stilts, so he fell right there, to prove he wasn't afraid.
"I was like, whoa, good answer," Arvin said. "Whenever I learned a new trick, I didn't want to go show my mom, I wanted to go show Caleb."
One day Caleb told his mother he'd made up his mind: He was going to run away and join the circus, for real. He wanted to live at the Lookout Arts Quarry, where many of the circus guild members live.
"Soon as I'm 18, I'm out," his mother recalled him saying. "I'm moving into the quarry. I've already talked to (my friends at the circus guild), and when they get old, I'm going to take care of them."
His two older brothers, Michael, 16, and Josiah, 13, remembered him as the brother who would always try to cheer people up when they were down.
During one of his magic tricks, Caleb would hold out a handful of ash. Then he would close his palm and the ash would appear in somebody else's hand. Michael said he still hasn't figured that one out, and whenever he'd ask for the secret, Caleb would just sit there laughing.
"He had the biggest smile," Michael said, "a wonderful smile, and his little puppy-brown eyes and his big old heavy head."
Bursting with creativity, Caleb found artistic outlets in drawing, painting and tailoring his own costumes. His imagination was full of wild stories.
"He'd say there were other existences out there, other universes," Melanie said. "Anytime he'd ever draw or write something, he'd say it was real, it was really out there. You would laugh and be like, 'OK, it's really out there.'"
While Caleb lay in the hospital bed on life-support, his parents decided to have his organs donated. That decision was heart wrenching, his mother said, but it saved the lives of six other children.
Michael remembered how the sunset looked on the day his brother was born. The birds were singing. The day Caleb died, he said, it was the same sunset.
"He's up there still working his magic for our family," Michael said. "Right now he's spinning around, going to find somebody else to touch and make them happy - to make the birds sing again, louder than ever."
Reach Caleb Hutton at caleb.hutton@bellinghamherald.com or call 360-715-2276.
MORE INFORMATION
- A funeral ceremony will be held at 1 p.m. Monday, Jan. 16, at Christ the King Church, 4173 Meridian St.
- Messages to the family and memories can be posted to the Facebook page, "Caleb Flip Kors- Support, Assist, Love."
- To make donations to the family, visit calebkors.chipin.com/caleb-kors.
- All proceeds from the Bellingham Circus Guild's monthly shows will go to the Kors family. The two performances start at 8 and 10 p.m. Sunday night, Jan. 15.
- Doesburg is starting up an arts scholarship in Caleb's name, and proceeds from the circus guild's Valentine's Day Show, a show dedicated to Caleb, will go toward funding the scholarship.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nKO5IkOQzBQ - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4bKIy3Wljo&feature=related
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dlb9t_N2Yo
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV74jxXoTWA&feature=related
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raj_tuEl4Mg&feature=related
- Obit Guestbook page: http://www.legacy.com/guestbook/bellinghamherald/guestbook.aspx?n=caleb-kors&pid=155445441&cid=full
