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| Tuesday, November 13, 2007 |
Six Who Matter: The Rescue Clown
This is part of our Nov/Dec 2007 issue. More specifically, this article is part of our 2007 Six Who Matter series.
When natural disasters strike, most people are content sending money. Not this 35-year-old. He mobilizes a posse of clowns and heads to the tragedy.
An email from Jeremy Cohen may be signed in several ways, including the most popular:
Jeremy "Krispy" Cohen. A performing clown, Krispy is Cohen's alter ego -— the one who acts in circuses, entertains children in hospitals, and most recently, responds to disasters with foamy red noses on hand.
It is a sweltering day in New York City when I meet Cohen, who pads up Riverside Drive in a pair of clown shoes. "I have always enjoyed reaching out to others," he says. "The first time I saw that I could make someone else's day a little bit brighter, I was hooked."
Having learned the art of clowning several years earlier, Cohen was watching Hurricane Katrina unfold from his office in Atlanta, Ga., in August 2005. (Cohen works for Reuters but was employed by CNN at the time.) His eyes flicked back and forth between the television monitor and a circus poster hanging on the wall when a light went off in his head. "I realized that the physical needs were being met, but the concern was, how would people address the emotional needs?" he recalls. "I knew I had to do something."
He quickly mobilized dozens of other performing clowns, who made their way to Louisiana to volunteer their support. Ultimately, some 50 clowns from around the country convened at a New Orleans school, where they went from room to room giving out 2,000 red noses to students and teachers. "It was tough," Cohen concedes, more than two years later, of the New Orleans response. He recalls making the "rookie mistake" of asking one hurricane survivor how he was doing, to which the man replied, "I think my child drowned and is probably dead, and I can't find my parents and I think they're dead." This did not seem like the proper place for clowning around.
Still, Cohen says the experience taught him that offering a shoulder to someone can be as helpful as telling jokes and riddles (which rarely are appropriate in disaster situations anyway). Today, Cohen's Red Nose Response organization includes 400 clowns in 33 states who are trained by the American Red Cross to respond to disasters ranging from house fires to tornados. "I'm not here to save the world," Cohen says matter-of-factly. At the end of the day, "I'm here to bring a little bit of joy and to do a little good."
As Krispy, who is a silent clown, Cohen's face is impeccably made up with dramatic eyebrows and a painted red rose. His typical costume consists of a jaunty sailor jacket and short green wig topped with a black beret. "There is a transformation that takes place when you become a clown," Cohen says, straightening his shoulders and demonstrating his makeup application with precise and graceful hand motions. "When I look in the mirror and I start to put on the makeup, my body starts to change, my face changes. I'm no longer looking at Jeremy, I'm looking at Krispy -- It sounds odd, but you become your character."
Cohen honed his dramatic flair as a theater and film major at Emory University, but did not learn the art of clowning for several years. After watching a History Channel documentary, he began performing in 2004 as a Shriner, whose members run several hundred Shriner's Hospitals for Children nationwide. One of the most important clowning skills he learned: "You have to be able to laugh at yourself before you can make others laugh at you," he says.
Today, the 35-year-old Cohen (an only child) says his parents fueled and inspired his tendency toward community service at an early age. "I've always been involved," he says. "It's always been kind of in my fiber." Jewishly, Cohen identifies most with the Reform movement, and he describes himself as a spiritual person. "Do I go to temple all the time? No. But does it mean that my religion is any less important? No. It's an essential part of my life," he says.
He jokes that he considers Red Nose Response (www.rednoseresponse.org) to be a kind of a mitzvah. "I'm just another guy with an idea for trying to help people. If I can do that in some small way," he says playfully, "Hopefully that will get me into heaven."
-- Text by E.B. Solomont / Photo by Sam Norval
This is part of our Nov/Dec 2007 issue. More specifically, this article is part of our 2007 Six Who Matter series.
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