Our Red Cross Volunteer Story: Clown Judy and Clown Gary

Our Red Cross Volunteer Story: Clown Judy and Clown Gary

Written by: Rose Ellen O’Connor, volunteer

Judy Gleklen Kopff stood outside the Fisher House at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Christmas Eve 2004 and cried. She and her husband, Gary, were scheduled to entertain wounded warriors and their children in the Fisher House dining room. She’d been volunteering as a clown since 1996, but this was her first experience entertaining the wounded, and she was scared. She didn’t know how she’d deal with double and triple amputees.

She rang the doorbell, and as soon as she and Gary entered, a three-year-old boy jumped off his father’s lap and ran to her, crying, “Daddy! Daddy! It’s a clown!” He latched onto her leg and wouldn’t let go.

“I dried my tears as unobtrusively as possible and started making balloon animals for children who were creating an ever-expanding line leading to my husband and me,” Judy recalls. “At that moment, their parents were not patients missing arms or legs or eyes. They were parents enjoying the smiles and squeals of laughter of their children on Christmas Eve. We call ourselves Giggle Therapists.”

“Clown Judy,” now 71, and “Clown Gary,” now 72, learned in December 2004 about the Red Cross program at Walter Reed, underwent training and have been Red Cross volunteers ever since. They entertained at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC until it closed in 2011 and then switched to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD.

Judy spent her Federal government career as a civilian working at the Pentagon in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.  After taking an early retirement at the age of 49 in 1996, she went back to work for the Secretary in 2003 to work on issues related to Iraq and Afghanistan.  Her final position as a chief of staff in an office dealing with battlefield contractors ended in 2008. Her intense, high profile jobs didn’t dampen her love of lightheartedness. It was at an office Christmas party in 2004 that she made her connection to Fisher House. Standing next to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s wife, Judy mentioned that she volunteered as a clown but didn’t have any place to entertain on Christmas. Mrs. Rumsfeld gave Judy the name of the person in charge at Walter Reed’s Fisher House.

These days Judy and Gary find themselves comfortable in any setting with wounded warriors and their families. For example, they’ve entertained at the Military Advanced Training Center (MATC), where the severely wounded go for intense physical and occupational therapy. At their first visit, they cautiously approached the head nurse and asked if they could enter MATC and interact with wounded warriors. The clowns received a thumbs up and entered accompanied by the head nurse’s service dog, who seemed to be saying, “These clowns are OK to be with you.”

The head nurse explained that this was the toughest physical therapy for young warriors now fitted with new arms and/or new legs and working hard for many hours at a time.  Clown Judy and Clown Gary were invited to distract the patients as they entered in full clown regalia, while carefully watched by MATC staff and the head service dog.

About four years ago, they were again at MATC and saw two patients – both double amputees -- lying on their stomachs on cots next to one another and working with physical therapists. Clown Gary thought one was asleep, so he started to show the other one a card trick. The patient they thought had been asleep turned and said, “Hey, I know that trick.” Gary then handed him the deck of magic cards and was relieved and pleased to have the young USMC corporal take over the magic demonstration for his band of brothers.

“We just watched,” Judy says. “We all were having fun, and the head nurse’s goal was met because our antics distracted the severely wounded patients for a few minutes from yet another long day learning how to walk on new prosthetic legs or how to prepare to hold their young children with new prosthetic arms.”

Gary walks the Walter Reed corridors “locked and loaded” with his multicolored squirt gun, which cannot fool the wounded warriors who know all too well the appearance of real guns.  He invites mayhem as he offers the use of his squirt gun to some patients.  As a highly decorated USMC General was walking amidst injured Marines who were perhaps one-third his age, Clown Gary mischievously whispered, “Anyone want to squirt the General?” One young double amputee seized the opportunity. 

“As the squirt gun did its worst, both men, as well as nearby staff and other patients, all broke into loud laughter,” Judy recalls.

Gary says, “When I get such laughter, it makes me feel that my mission is being accomplished. We don’t get paid in coin. We get paid in laughs.”

Sometimes the laughter and smiles are mixed with tears. One summer Judy and Gary were at a barbeque for wounded warriors and their families. Gary was pumping up a balloon to shape into a dog for a young man in a wheelchair; he wanted the balloon dog for his young son. It was a hot day, and the balloon accidentally popped. The sound instantly took the young combat veteran back to his memory of being severely wounded by an IED in Afghanistan. The patient started to cry, as did Clown Gary. Impulsively, both men hugged each other.

“Don’t worry,” the patient said to Gary. “We need to keep going so I not only have a toy balloon for my son, but I can also move a step closer to learning how NOT to react to loud noises now that I’m stateside.”

Judy and Gary understand smiling through tears. In the mid-1980s, they tried to conceive five times through in vitro fertilization. Judy also underwent four major surgeries to open her fallopian tubes, and then they turned to a surrogate mother. She turned out to be a fraud.

“At that point, I decided no more. We’re not going to try any more to have a baby. My experience of not being able to have children was one of the most difficult, most painful experiences of my life,” Judy says.

Once the decision to stop trying to have children was made, Judy stepped up her volunteering, whereas Gary turned to serving on the Board of Outward Bound, where he first learned to mountain climb in his home state of Colorado.  His climbing took him to all seven continents as he climbed some of their highest mountains, including the Vinson Massif in the Antarctic in 1991 and Everest in 1992.

In 1996, Judy discovered clowning. She’s made balloon creations and performed silly magic tricks for orphans and polio patients in Vietnam, local pediatric cancer patients, DC firefighters and police, elementary school children, and teenaged Maasai warriors in Kenya. She’s also entertained nursing home residents, foster families, kids in homeless shelters, Johns Hopkins Medical School students, the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and at the Million Mom March. Gary has accompanied her since his first venture to Walter Reed on Christmas Eve 2004.

“The joy in my heart when I see smiles on the faces of the people I entertain confirms that all my efforts are worthwhile,” Judy wrote for her upcoming Cornell University 50^th reunion book.

It’s not always joyful. Sometimes patients just want to talk, and Judy and Gary listen. “Some of their stories are overwhelming, and I sit and listen and cry,” Judy says.

Every so often their clowning can have big consequences. In December, Judy volunteered as a clown at an Easter Seals dinner reception, and a woman came up to her and told her that she had met her husband almost three years ago because of Judy. Clown Judy had made a balloon flower for the woman’s husband-to-be at the 2015 DOD Warrior Games in Quantico, VA (competitions for wounded, ill, and injured service members and veterans). He had used the flower to introduce himself to the woman, and now they’re married and have a baby.

“That made me cry,” Judy said, “but they were happy tears.”

It takes Judy three hours to transform herself into a clown. First, it takes her 45 minutes to an hour to make a three-foot tall hat out of balloons. Then she paints a big heart on each cheek, outlining in black eyeliner and coloring in with red lipstick. She attaches purple, gold, pink and black false eyelashes for the upper lashes and draws 10 long, black eyelashes out of eyeliner underneath each eye. She puts on her costume of polka dot bloomers, a red petticoat, a blouse emblazoned with clown decals, a puffy skirt with USMC stripes on the sides and a satin vest embroidered with “CLOWN JUDY” on the back.  Finally, she places a red foam ball on her nose and puts on a red wig.

Judy grew up a twin, the fourth of five children to Leo and Honey Gleklen. She was born a triplet, but one sister died when she was just a few months old. The family lived in Providence, RI, and Judy describes them as “silly, happy and openly affectionate, where kisses and laughter were the highlights of our daily lives.” The five children were always encouraged to help less fortunate people and to make them smile, she says, planting the seed for her becoming a clown many years later. They were encouraged to do volunteer work, and she started at age 6, performing ballet recitals and singing with her twin sister at nursing homes. She was also a Red Cross Candy Striper in high school and did a variety of volunteer work as an undergraduate at Cornell University.  Judy’s mom was always active in non-profit organizations, and she and her siblings continue that tradition.

Gary retired several years ago from his work as a financial strategy consultant and expert witness in lawsuits helping unravel the mess made by some of the largest banks in the US and Europe.  He grew up in Denver with an older sister. His mom was a devoted Red Cross volunteer, called a Gray Lady. His parents, Joseph and Claire Kopff, stressed academics, and Gary went east to Yale College.  After graduation, he studied at Cornell’s Graduate School of Management, where he met Judy.  They married in Providence in 1969, after Judy finished graduate studies in art history in New York City.

Today, Judy and Gary find fulfillment in the volunteer work they do.

“It makes me feel good when I bring smiles to the faces of children and ‘children-at-heart,’ as I call the adults,” Judy says. “Most adults like to smile and like to feel good. And If I can make them and their families feel good for a few minutes so that they can forget their pain, then that’s a good thing.”