Thomas Robert Hanneford was born on September 18th, 1927. Like his two siblings, George Junior and Kay Frances, he spent his early childhood with his grandmother, "Nana" Breen, while his parents were on the road - except during the winter months when the whole Hanneford clan lived in Glenn Falls, New York. Poodles, George, and Lizzie all built houses on the same street which was subsequently named Hanneford Road.
     When he was old enough his father took him full time on the road and tried to teach him riding skills but he was afraid of horses and didn't do as well as his brother and sister. Instead he became an excellent tumbler. When he was fourteen he began to improve his horsemanship though he never caught up with the others. It wasn't until George Jr. was drafted that he began to take riding more seriously.
     At age eighteen he was also drafted and managed to get into Special Services, entertaining the troops. Apart from tumbling, juggling, and trampoline he also was assigned to schedule the shows and performers where they were needed. Within eight months he was promoted to staff sergeant and was sent to Miami's Pratt General Hospital gathering talent from Miami Beach to entertain at the hospital.
     Tommy got out in 1947 and rejoined the family riding act as the comedian - taking up the role of Poodles, complete with fur coat. At first he copied his uncle's routines but, as with George and Kay, they started to modernize the act - updating costumes and make-up. They did keep the fur coat, however. It was a Hanneford trademark. They also added new routines and tricks, some copied some orginal, until the New George Hanneford Riding Act became equal in strength and prestige as the orginal Hanneford Riding Act of Poodles, George, and Lizzie during the teens and twenties.
     In 1955, after several succesful years working with the Clyde Beatty, the family act left the show and was working on the Polack Circus he married Struppi. As often happens in a travelling performer's life, Tommy and Struppi had met several times on different shows but could never quite get together as they were each following their own careers. Finally Tommy went to Chicago, where she was working with her partner, Trude, as the Luvas. They married on December 8th, 1955.
     Struppi was born Gertrude Zimmerman on September 26, 1931 in Speyer-am-Rhein, Germany. Neither of her parents were form any side of entertainment. Her father was a baker, her mother a housewife. From her earliest days she was constantly doing roll overs, back bends, and all kinds of stunts. Her father encouraged her and would hold a stick in his hands and she would hang from it and do all kinds of tricks. When the war came her father was taken into the army and was killed in battle. Her mother took the seven year old to a retired trapeze performer, Frau Johann, who lived in their town and asked her to train Struppi as an acrobat. She was sent to Heidelberg to learn ballet and then put up a trapeze in her bedroom and taught her for the next year before allowing Struppi out in public. Unfortunately things were getting bad and agents couldn't get her work locally. Work permits were out of the queastion so Struppi returned home to go back to regular school. She wanted to enter the Olympics so studied diving and the high and low beams.
     When Struppi was thirteen she, and her mother, found out that Frau Johann (Trude) had opened an acrobatic school and Struppi reluctantly joined. The two decided to team up and create a double act - the Luvas Sisters. Struppi got her nickname about this time too. Trude was taking a group of her students into a vineyard. They were picking grapes and eating them. the vineyard owner's wife got mad and yelled at Trude. Struppi defended her so the woman called her "Struppigel" - something like a hedgehog. The name stuck, albeit shortened.
    At first the double act had a very difficult time getting work - often hitchhiking to jobs and passing the hat afterwards. Then, slowly, they improved both their act and their opportunities, eventually landing an offer to go to the United States in 1953 with Mills Brothers Circus. They were expected to do three acts, including the standard "web" routine. Trude's father had trained dogs for a hobby so they decided to do a dog act too.  The reception they recieved upon arrival was less than cordial until the owners saw the two girls work. Then everything changed. They had their contracts picked up for the next year but had a difficult time making it through the winter months. By the time she first met Tommy, in about 1954, the two girls were working their way up the ladder of success.
    At first Tommy and Struppi continued working separately, but things got too hectic. So, even though the girls had just worked the Ed Sullivan Show, Trude brought her son, Peter, over from Germany to replace Struppi and, in 1956, Struppi left to join Tommy. She developed a solo trapeze act that became one of the best of its kind ever. Dressed as an "indian maiden" she worked under the name of Princess Tajana - entering on a horse; costumed in a huge feather headdress. Under that name she worked the Ed Sullivan Show again, in 1961, and in Radio City Music Hall in 1971. She later learned the high wire and had a dog act. She had to give up the trapeze and wire act after a fall off a horse during the riding act caused severe damage to her shoulder. Tommy suggested she do a wild animal act and she eventually became the first woman to work a tiger act. Struupi was honered by the Ringling Museum of the American Circus in Sarasota, Florida, in 1975 - the eleventh performer to be so recognized.
    George Hanneford Sr. had always wanted his own cirus but never quite made it. Tommy, however, realized his fathers dream and started his own show in 1965. It was the first time The Hanneford Circus appeared since 1915 when the show was bought out by John Ringling.
It was an on-again off-again show while Tommy tried working with different partners but, finally, in 1976, he landed a plum contract with the Moslem Shrine which put The Royal Hanneford Circus on its way to becoming one of the last great independant traveling circus shows in the United States.
     In 1978 Tommy hired Mark Karoly as a rider in his horse act. Karoly's mother, Evy, was a principal rider on the Ringling show in the 1950's. When Tommy finally retired from riding he sold the riding act to Karoly who continued the act with the Royal Hanneford Circus for many more years.
     Today Tommy and Struppi continue producing shows all over the United States, often having as many as four different units on the road at the same time, making them one of the most successful independant circus owners this century.