Angel Wallenda said goodbye to the tightwire Sunday night, joining her husband and 3-year-old son for one last performance before an operation she hopes will arrest the cancer that claimed her leg. Steven Wallenda joined his wife and their precocious toddler Steven II to the tune of ``Angel of the Morning'' on the tightwire that has brought the family fame for decades. ``You have to overcome a certain fear,'' Mrs. Wallenda, 21, said after the performance in Mansfield, where the family lives. ``And I've done that with both the wire and the cancer.'' In 1987, Mrs. Wallenda was diagnosed with bone cancer, and doctors were forced to amputate her right leg and fit her with a prosthesis. The cancer spread to her lungs, and she is scheduled to undergo further surgery March 20 at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, Calif. ``I'm glad I got to do it,'' she said of Sunday's performance. This month's surgery will end her career as an aerialist. Her husband said he and their son will continue the performing tradition. Ticket sales for the performance, which draw about 1,000 people to Mansfield University, raised more than $3,500 for her medical bills, supplemented by some $4,500 from a local Vietnam veterans' group. Steven Wallenda is a veteran of that war. Shaky at first Sunday night, Mrs. Wallenda steadied during the latter part of her walk across the 30-foot steel rope, followed closely by her husband. A later act featured Steven II in a harness riding on his father's shoulders. Wallenda traces his family's tightwire heritage to the 1600s. The most famous of the Wallenda acrobats, ``Karl the Great,'' died after a 1978 fall during a performance in Puerto Rico. Steven Wallenda II is the last male performer born with the Wallenda name and one of the few direct descendants of the original acrobats. The elder Wallenda said he hoped Steven II would follow in his careful footsteps, but, ``It's up to him.''
