Student clown lends
helping hand during WalkAmerica

While clowning around for a good cause, the March of Dimes WalkAmerica on April 29, Adrienne Nash, AS 2003, a member of Clowns for Medicine, found a young, lost boy and helped return him to his parents.

The day started out with Nash and another clown entertaining the walkers before the walk. Dressed tastefully in a pink and purple clown outfit with matching hat and generic clown make-up–white face, big red mouth–Nash handed out stickers and balloons to the small children who were walking. "When he saw me, one little boy said, 'You just stay there! I'll get my daddy to get my balloon,'" she recalled.

As the walk began, the two clowns drove to a Main Street water stop near Grotto's Pizza Restaurant to cheer the walkers on and then started back to the finish.

"We were driving near McKinly Lab, and I saw this little boy and thought that he was much too young to be by himself, and he was not on the walk's route, so we decided to stop," Nash said.

"I don't know what he thought when he saw this clown pop out of the car! He was in tears and knew he was lost. I asked him if he wanted a ride to the end of the race, but he told me he wasn't allowed in strange cars–and, of course. a car with clowns was even stranger," she said. "So I walked him back to Grotto's where the police had radios, and they found his parents, and we continued on back to the finish line for the end of the march."

Clowns for Medicine, a registered student organization, brings laughter to centers for the elderly, hospitals, church functions and day care centers.

Nash, who is completing her second year at Delaware, is from Allentown and said she plans to attend medical school. Her interest in medicine led to her joining Clowns for Medicine. A biology major, she was a research intern in an Allentown Hospital last summer, working in neonatology, a field that interests her. The experience also gave her the opportunity to follow a neonatologist around and learn about the field firsthand.

This summer, as a Science and Engineering Scholar, she will be doing undergraduate research in molecular biology.

–Sue Moncure

 Photo by Kathy Flickinger