Director's Update

Spring 2011

Posted April 21st, 2011 by Richard Snowberg

It was an honor to have lead the Clown Camp® program for 30 years. On this page I’ll provide a log with periodic updated information relative to the greater Clown Camp family as well as activities with which I’m involved.

During the last six months of 2010 we lost three members of our instructional staff family: Jack Frank, Frosty Little and Dee Burda. I was able to attend and speak at Dee’s funeral in Friend, Nebraska this past fall. We know that these fine individuals are now clowning forever after.

At the conclusion of Clown Camp we had over $22,000 left in our camp scholarship fund. Since the program has now concluded its regularly scheduled programming I decided to leave $1000 in our name to the Univ. of Wisconsin-La Crosse for a future academic scholarship. The remaining $21,251 was transferred as a gif to the Wishland Pony Express fund benefiting chronically or terminally ill youngsters. (This is the fund which we have supported since 1987.) This funding will help the organization realize a goal to have a self sustaining endowment which will utilize interest earnings annual to support all wishes for many, many decades to come. I thank all of you for making this gifting possible

This early winter I had a nice chance to visit with Terry Davolt as he was in Denver working the Native American Showcase and Market. It was great seeing him and visiting about ‘old times’.

I have recently spoken with Dorothy Miller, who until recently was in a rehabilitation center receiving physical therapy. She has now moved into her daughter’s home.
I will be at the World Clown Association convention in New York City in March. I hope to see many of you at that time. A week following the convention Jan and I will travel to Tokyo. I will be joining RONE and Gigi for one performance, and I’ll be doing nine hours of lecturing. About half of what I’ll be doing will focus around caring clowning. Following this ‘work assignment’ we will go to a spa resort for a few days of relaxing.

Sometime in the next four months I’ll be traveling to Borneo where I’ll do a site visit for the WCA. We are looking into hosting a future convention in that part of the world. I’ve been corresponding with Sam Tee about this program, and he has gotten some very attractive financial support from the Malaysian government for this venture.

We spent two and a half months in Colorado this winter and are now back in La Crosse until summer. At that time we’ll go back to Golden and spend the summer.