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Last We Heard
Ben is retired and lives in the Marion area. |
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Stories We Heard |
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Excerpt from Southcoast Today Article
January 10, 2011 by Bridget McSweeney © Copyright Gannett 2022 MATTAPOISETT -- At 70, Ben Schneider has lived a full life. But he is best known for two years. More than a quarter century ago, he showed up on Channel 6 every week -- one of the most popular television celebrities in Southern New England. Mr. Schneider, you see, was Bozo the Clown. 
While he remembers it as a turning point in his life, Mr. Schneider doesn't define himself by it. Instead he talks about the small triumphs, the little events that happened every so often when he made someone laugh or helped someone in need. He lives his life in moments, and always has. "Too many people live outside their lives," he said. "They don't live their lives -- I mean really live them -- and usually by the time people realize this, it's too late." Before he was Bozo, Mr. Schneider moved from place to place and job to job. His resume radio announcing, meter reading, weather forecasting and working as a deck hand. He traveled across the country, from Kansas City to New York to Pennsylvania to Maine, then to Massachusetts. The man behind Bozo, voted class clown in high school, finally landed in New Bedford, where he settled and eventually found the happiness he had always given others. But Mr. Schneider's life clearly hadn't been all laughs. He came from a broken home -- his parents divorced when he was 16 months old -- and only knew his father in spurts. Because of vision problems, the Army wouldn't take him after he graduated from high school in 1944. Maybe it was fate. Mr. Schneider ended up following a friend to the University of Alabama, where he discovered radio. "I found out there was a radio department and that was the end of that. It was the only thing I was terribly interested in. I needed to be liked. I was an exhibitionist, and I had verbal skills," he said. In 1953, during one move and one marriage, Mr. Schneider went to Maine where his mother had re-married and lived. This is where he discovered two loves the theater and boats. He worked as a theater decorator and on a freight boat. Finally he did some work in television. It was after his third marriage failed that he moved to Massachusetts. "I had some friends who went to New Bedford. I started working for WTEV in 1968," he said. Soon after that, Bozo the Clown was franchised and WTEV (now WLNE) wanted a part of it. "I went for training in Dallas with the original Bozo. Pinto Colvig did Bozo's voice on the radio. He also did Goofy. But by the time they wanted to make a physical Bozo for television, he was too old to do it," Mr. Schneider said. Mr. Schneider hasn't donned the clown makeup, floppy wig or red nose in many years. But if you close your eyes and listen to his voice, you'd never know it was a white-haired man with a beard and mustache and shining blue-green eyes sitting before you. "Well gosh, Mickey. Wowee, you guys don't know what's going on, do you?" he says in a perfect imitation of Disney's Goofey. "God, I haven't done that in 15 years," Mr. Schneider said. And in the two years he was Bozo, from 1969-71, he also found true love. He held the Laundromat door for Sherry Martin one day and didn't see her again for 18 months. But he knew she was the one. And a month and a half after their first date in February 1970, they were married. Mr. Schneider was 43. It was his fourth marriage. Now he and Sherry are preparing for their 27th anniversary on Feb. 27. "It was just right. That's all. I was finally ready to share myself. To talk about my stupidities, faults and failures. I had become an absentee parent the way my father had deserted me," Mr. Schneider said. He has three children from previous marriages -- two daughters and a son. He also has a granddaughter and great granddaughter. The marriage was one of those moments that define Mr. Schneider. Shortly after he married, Bozo was canceled. "The best part of being Bozo comes now when people remember. It's better than any individual event that happened when I was doing the show," he said. After Bozo, Mr. Schneider went to work on the other side of the camera. He retired in 1994 -- the year he bought his first house in . In retirement, Mr. Schneider dreams of owning a boat -- he has always wanted one. "We bought a house instead," he said. Even in retirement, he lives for the moment. His earring and a tattoo were acquired at age 69. The earring is a result of a 25th wedding anniversary cruise around the South Pacific. He designed it himself -- a gold ring represents the Earth, and criss-crossed lines are the equator and the course the boat took. The tattoo on his arm is four black lines, a Picasso replica called "feme" (woman in French). They are representative of his two passions in life -- his wife and the sea. And he still acts, being Bozo in his own way. "If I can lighten someone's day. It still gives me a chance to act, to entertain, to give something back." |
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