Sorry I am a day late on this, but my day was taken up with a jump to Red Bluff, CA, waiting for hours to have my trailer parked, and trying not to melt in the August heat. Ya know, circus stuff!
Today I am in a better humor to write about Mark Renfro, who would have celebrated his birthday yesterday. I first met Mark my final year on Ringling. He was assisting Ruthie Chaddock in making plaster casts of the new clowns' faces in Fort Worth, TX, so of course I picked his brain about whatever I could think of.
In the following years he would always come to visit whatever show that Ryan and I were on, and he would have such wonderful compliments about our performances afterwards.
Many times he was accompanied by his best friend, Brenda Marshall, who reached out to me shortly after Mark's passing. She felt Mark would want me to have his extensive collection of circus clown memorabilia, which absolutely floored me. What an honor.
Last year our tour took us close enough to Fort Worth that I was able to meet with Brenda at Mark's house and move everything to a storage unit.
Since then I have been digitizing the thousands of photos, slides, and documents that Mark had been collecting from when he attended Clown College, up through his time with Clown College Japan and the original Clown College, and his years of work with the Feld organization as an amazing artist and prop builder.
I have loved sharing bits of his collection on this blog. However, so many times I am sadly reminded that I cannot ask him questions about whatever I am looking at. What a history was lost.
Thank you, Brenda, for thinking Mark would want me to have his collection, and thank you Mark for being a friend, archivist, and such a talented, dryly hilarious, and kind person.
Here are some photos from Mark's collection from his time in Clown College in 1980 and his year on the road with the Blue Unit in 1981.
Peggy Williams teaching at the Ringling Clown College in 1980. From the photo collection of Mark Renfro.
