Summerbell trades iconic wheel for convertible
By Scott Bellile
In the latter half of the “New Dublin” celebration’s 35-year history, the Wacky Wheeler was about as big a tradition as the corned beef and cabbage.
Each St. Patrick’s Day parade, Wisconsin’s enthusiastic crowd-pleaser rolled onto North Water Street in his 10-foot-high wheel like an upright hamster. Bystanders’ spirited cheers chopped through the brisk March air as they recognized the sight of the eccentric old-man character Melvin the Wacky Wheeler.
For the parade’s three-quarter-mile route, Melvin amused onlookers with antics fit for a kooky leprechaun: “walking the dog,” barreling over volunteers who bravely lay on the pavement, and sprinting frantically after the occasional runaway wheel.
Perched atop his contraption’s highest rungs, the Wacky Wheeler could meet face-to-face with the folks waving from second-story windows.
In news that will strike a brawling Irishman’s blow to the gut of many parade-goers, the beloved Wacky Wheeler is not wheeling any longer. He took his last spin in December because even stunt performers’ bodies need rest.
“I would still be doing it if my knees weren’t telling me not to,” the man behind Melvin’s character, 56-year-old Rob Summerbell of Madison, told the Press Star. “There just comes a day where I need to knock it off or scale it back a little bit.”
In honor of his years of entertainment to the community, the Shamrock Club of New Dublin will give Summerbell a proper sendoff at the parade he frequented.
New Dublin’s ‘best advertisement’
Summerbell is the 2019 grand marshal for the New Dublin St. Patrick’s Day Grand Parade, set for Saturday, March 23 at 1 p.m.
The Shamrock Club’s parade director, Jill Hart, first encountered the Wacky Wheeler at Milwaukee’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in 2002.
Looking to grow New London’s event, she met him afterward and got him to sign a contract that day to perform next week at New Dublin.
“He’s been some of our best advertisement promoting our parade, and just to hear what everybody has to say about him, and to see the smiles on the kids’ faces and the adults’,” Hart said. “And then when I found out he was retiring, it was a no-brainer: This guy’s got to be our grand marshal.”
The now-full-time-carpenter said reliable gigs like the New Dublin Grand Parade during his performance career allowed him to make the Wacky Wheeler his main profession for many years.
Of all the St. Patrick’s Day parades Summerbell did, New London’s ranked highly for its lively atmosphere, he said.
This positive reception pushed him to return about a dozen times after his first foray down North Water Street in 2002.
“I remember being impressed by the amount of people and the amount of energy – I’ve always been impressed by that – at the New London parade,” Summerbell said. “Whether rain or shine, the enthusiasm and the crowds are amazing there.”
The wheel gets turning
Summerbell began his act in 1999 after a history of playing on pogo sticks, skateboards, stilts and trapezes.
He attended a Cirque du Soleil show in 1998 where Chris Lashua performed on the German wheel, a device like the Wacky Wheeler’s but smaller and capable of rotating at both orientations.
Summerbell got backstage access after the show as a member of a Madison trapeze troupe. Up close, he became fascinated with Lashua’s German wheel.
The next year while walking his dog near his farmhouse, Summerbell passed a junkyard and laid eyes upon 10 industrial cable reels that a construction company had tossed out.
Imagining his own knockoff German wheel, Summerbell asked to buy a reel. The company handed it to him for free, happy not to be paying to dispose of the 350-pound reel.
He learned the wheel, and the hobby evolved into a career.
Summerbell said he completed more than 1,200 public appearances throughout 13 states, performing in “7 degrees and 107” during his parade season of St. Patrick’s Day through Christmas.
Summertime was the Wacky Wheeler’s busiest season with ample time away from home. To see his wife and children more, Summerbell incorporated them into his work.
His wife, Laura, was his business manager. Son Sean, now 21, and daughter Lilah, 10, served as roll-over obstacles or rode alongside his wheel on bicycles. Sometimes one of the children would nab his wheel and go, spurring him to chase after the thief by bicycle.
Summerbell also let the public participate in his act.
For example, each year at the New Dublin Grand Parade, a crowd of about 20 loyal spectators would congregate near the judge’s stand waiting to get down on the pavement for a mass roll-over. This phenomenon happened enough that Summberbell began to recognize their faces.
“It’s kind of like a tradition,” Summerbell said. “They’re going to be sad [I retired] for sure.”
Elated to be honored
Summerbell became such an icon in the city’s parade that local artists painted his image into a New London mural erected on the Bumper to Bumper Auto Parts building in 2008.
“That kind of blew me away,” Summerbell said. “When I turned up next year, nobody told me about it. I just happened upon it, and that was pretty cool.”
Just as seeing himself depicted in art was an honor, so is being named New Dublin’s 2019 grand marshal, Summerbell said. He looks forward to coming up and having a good time.
That is, so long as he can handle the stationary act of waving from the convertible and resist the urge to hop upon his beloved 1-story wheel.
“It’ll be weird,” Summerbell said. “I’ll feel a little bit naked without my big prop.”
If you go
What: New Dublin St. Patrick’s Day Grand Parade.
When: Saturday, March 23 at 1 p.m.
Where: South Pearl Street and North Water Street, downtown New London.
This article was corrected to state Summerbell appeared on a mural on the Bumper to Bumper Auto Parts building in 2008, not a mural on the former Drycleaners Etc. building in 2009.