Emmett Kelly, Jr. : 1923 - 2006 RIP
Bruce Kesler emailed this to me a short while ago. Emmett Kelly, Jr., who carried on the Weary Willie clown character his father had introduced, has passed away in Tombstone, Arizona. Bruce has a nice remembrance of Weary Willie, the clown who swept up the spotlight.
Here's the Emmett Kelly, Jr. Website if you are looking for a biography.
By Bruce Bluemel, Monday, 4 December , 2006 @ 10:43 am
I knew Emmett for only this past year, and after he had long since retired from show business. We met through a mutual friend and in short order Emmett and I found out that we both had much in common. We both worked on the railroad in our younger days, we both were in the U. S. Navy during our military obligation (just different wars). We both loved the big band era. We loved the mystic of the old west. And we loved the town of Tombstone. We spent countless mornings over his hot coffee talking about his circus days and the hardships of the required travel between shows and the highways that we were both familiar with (I retired from the long haul trucking industry), talking about the parades, Kodak, WW2, French and German cars. His early families and on & on. Sometimes we just laughed at things around town. Emmett was opinionated as most of us who grow older get. He refused, however, to speak anything political. He had enough wisdom to know that any discussion about such things were a waste of breath.
I still wait each day for the expected phone call from his place saying “coffees on, are you coming up.”
My wife and I both knew too that his health was tenous at best. He grew frail and his activities reduced to making audio tapes of big bands and what he titled “this & That”, where he simply spoke of his personal experiences.
He spoke often, too, of his love for his daughter, Cherry Ann. He was so thankful to her for her undying love and devotion. He felt that this was what kept him at home instead of an old age home. She cooked, cleaned and chased for him and met the needs that evereyday life require of each of us. She became his conscience in many of his affairs. Keeping a watchful eye on his activities, money management and concerns.
In the end, We were priveledged to be with him when he passed into Gods hands and I know that heaven is having a laugh while “Weary Willie” puts on a show in the company of his father and mother, the two people that steered him into circus business.
Heaven is richer and the Earth mourns.
Goodbye Emmett. I know we’ll meet again one day and hopefully we can laugh again over another cup of coffee. I’m going to sorely miss you.
Rest in peace, my friend.
Bruce and Claudia
By Jasper the Clown, Friday, 15 December , 2006 @ 8:24 pm
< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> < !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
The world is a better place because EKJ was in it.
Long live the King.
Jasper the Clown
(Edit) No hotlinked photos allowed - Spam software kills link.