WELTON FILES: CIRCUS CLOWNS, A BALLERINA AND A MYSTERY

Fifty-five years ago, Union writer Welton Jones used his journalistic skills to help to solve a mystery involving circus clowns and the missing grave of a Russian ballerina.

Jones, the former arts writer for The San Diego Union and later the Union-tribune who died Dec. 17, had been contacted by two clowns from the Moscow State Circus, which was planning its first visit to San Diego.

The clowns asked for help in finding the grave of a Russian ballerina who had spent the last months of her life here so they could celebrate memory on behalf of her nephew, a student clown at the Moscow circus school. They only had the name.

It was Olympiada Alperova.

A dogged reporter, Jones spent considerable time tracking down the name without success. The problem was that no such person was known to have been buried anywhere in California, according to official Sacramento sources. But after an anonymous caller, responding to a story in The San Diego Union, supplied the ballerina’s official last name — Helken —not only was the grave located but also the dancer’s obituary was found.

She was born in 1901, trained as a dancer before the Soviet Revolution and may have danced with Pavlova. After World War II, she was a ballet mistress at the Nuremberg Opera when she met members of the San Diego family who helped her move here.

She came with plans to open a ballet school in San Diego. But after just 10 months here, she was stung by a ray while swimming off Coronado and died from complications.

When the Moscow Circus visited San Diego in December 1967, several performers visited Mt. Hope Cemetery to place flowers on the grave. Welton Jones was there, too.

From The San Diego Union, Friday, Dec. 29, 1967

HELPED BY SAN DIEGO FAMILY She came to San Diego with the assistance of a local family that prefers to remain anonymous. They had known her in Nuremberg shortly after World War II when she was ballet mistress at the Nuremberg Opera House.

She had planned to open a dance studio in San Diego, a member of the local family remembers, and had brought her personal effects, including paintings, costumes and papers, to help raise money.

But before she could complete the process of relocating in a country whose language she didn’t speak, she died, at 52, from complications which developed when she was stung by a ray while swimming.

“She loved San Diego and she especially loved the ocean,” the local source said.

Madam Alperova’s story came to light when members of the Moscow Circus, now playing at the International Sports Arena, asked assistance in finding the grave.

Their help had been requested by Dmitri Alperova, 23, Madame Alperova’s nephew, a student clown in the Moscow circus school.

DMITRI ‘A VERY GOOD BOY’ “Just before we left, Dmitri came up to me and asked us to visit his aunt’s grave,” Nikulin said through an interpreter. “We immediately agreed, since he’s a very good boy.”

“He looks just like her,” mused Nikulin’s wife, Tatiana, while looking at the photograph of Madame Alperova on the gravestone.

The handful of San Diegans who remembers Madame Alperova were unaware that her family in Russia knew of her death here. When she died, the only survivor listed was her brother, C. Alperoff, a producer for the Folles Bergere.

Madame Alperova’s last name in official records is Helken, the name of a ballet master still in Germany whom she married and later divorced before coming to the United States.

Since she left no will, her estate was settled by the county public administrator’s office.