These clowns were serious about making people laugh.
For Joy The Clown, “clowning wasn’t an act, it was his life.”
“And his name was no joke.”
He loved showing folks his driver’s license to prove that Joy The Clown wasn’t just a stage name — it was his legal name, according to the obituary Lauren Blais wrote for the Gainesville (Georgia) Times.
And when it came to clowning, Joy didn’t need a stage:
“For the last 12 years of his life, Joy served ice cream at the Corner Drugstore on Thompson Bridge Road in Gainesville. When students from Enota Multiple Intelligences Academy walked down to get ice cream with their class, Joy would don his bowler hat, barber shop quartet jacket, white pants and makeup.”
Here are a few other clowns who put smiles on faces before they died.
Pepi the Clown (aka Donald Edward Borgeson) was a Shriners clown in Bozeman, Montana, who entertained kids at parties and older folks at nursing homes.
According to his obituary, “No matter where he went, he carried a pocket full of balloons so he could bring a smile to those he met.”
Bumper “T” Clown (aka George Washington Edwards Jr.) volunteered as a clown for sick people in many hospitals across South New Jersey.
“He founded an international organization titled Bumper ‘T’ Caring Clowns that brings support and joy to those ill and in need of a smile.” The group was recognized by the World Clown Association as the largest hospital clowning organization in the U.S.
Edwards received the Governor’s Award for the Most Innovative Volunteer Program in New Jersey.
Calling herself “Pixie from Dixie” Joan Elaine Gunn started a clown ministry in the 1990s.
She “traveled to Eastern Europe in 1996 to minister and clown,” according to her obituary published in the Pensacola (Florida) News Journal.
And last but not least, there’s retired pharmaceutical executive and former college basketball star Thomas J. Leverte. He “toured the country with the Kokomo Clowns, a New York circus basketball team,” according to the obit in the Marin Independent Journal.
This post was contributed by Alana Baranick, a freelance obituary writer. She was the director of the Society of Professional Obituary Writers and chief author of Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers before she passed away in 2015.
