In a screaming red outfit with a glittering top hat and shining wig of red curls, Sandra Holter burst into the newsroom and started her clown routine.
“Hi, my name is Flowers!” she wrote on a small erase board, with a big smile stretched even wider by a red penciled grin. “Thanks,” she followed, after wiping away the greeting with a gloved hand. And then she scribbled, “Don’t be sad,” and she presented a sad person with a bouquet of plastic white flowers. “See u r smiling.”
Holter, 50, of West Paris, is launching a clowning business that will blend humor and humanity, tradition and inanity, in a mix that will raise money for charity. She is ready to work at children’s parties, promotional events for businesses, skating parties and other celebrations. She’ll deliver hugs with a song and a dance and make visits to nursing homes.
And half her proceeds will go to charity.
Holter acknowledged that she wants to clown to supplement her income. She has been working for Androscoggin Home Care in Lewiston, and the physical demands of the job require she begin easing out of the work, she said. She also plans to earn a degree in social work, and the money will help support her education.
But she also wants to use clowning to do good, more than just making people snort and snicker, a worthy endeavor in itself.
“I think we should all help out in some way,” she said, in a recent interview. Her idea is to let the children or parent hiring her services choose what charity they’d like to support. If they have no choice, she said she prefers to give money to nursing homes in the Norway, Paris, Oxford area.
“I would like it to go to those organizations for wheelchairs, or for outings, or for workers who might need a nice bonus once a month,” she said.
Holter has led an unpredictable life, and this latest invention of clowning for a cause follows a route that has taken her across the country and through several careers.
She grew up in Maryland, where she raised a son, who’s now 32, and worked as a saleswoman selling integrated circuitry for computers. She also sold real estate.
She left Maryland for the West when an opportunity came up. She helped a disabled veteran and worked with mentally disabled people, as well as doing some real estate work, in Nebraska and New Mexico.
When she returned to the East Coast in 2002, she spotted an ad looking for a care assistant for an elderly woman in West Paris. She took care of the woman for the two years before her death.
Holter said she’s never been to clown school, but has read many books on face painting, animal ballooning and acrobatics. She’s studying magic tricks.
She first met a clown when she was in Florida in 1997, a man who performed on the street. At the time, she was helping her mother, and the two themes – making people laugh and helping older people – started to click.
And although clowns don’t leap to mind as typical role models, Holter said she hopes to be one for the kids she entertains, but a role model with a little kick and a wink.
“I hope I am a role model for kids,” she said, “about how to make money for charity, or if you want to do something with your life, how to get out there simply with $50, $60.”
Just enough to buy a curly wig, size-20 plastic clown shoes, a squirting flower for your lapel and a squeaky round nose.
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