She Dishes Out Cheer to the Disadvantaged

Jeanette L. Tolbert has vivid memories of growing up in a “fairly poor family” eating beans and potatoes as a full meal.

“That’s probably all we had, but at least I didn’t have to stand in the street and ask for food,” she remembers.

Those early days may account for her work helping hundreds of parents and their children who come to Featherly Regional Park in Yorba Linda on Sundays for food and clothing donated by 25 participating churches.

The food distribution started three years ago.

Tolbert doesn’t look the part of a volunteer, considering she wears 2-foot-long red shoes, bright yellow and white bloomer pants and pajama tops, lavender hair and a red nose.

She spends her Sundays entertaining the children and their parents as Blossum the Clown, a role she learned by taking lessons from a professional clown.

He helped her create Blossum and the clown’s doll, named Budd, whom she carries to help quiet the fears some children have of clowns.

“I used to work for a florist and thought Blossum was a colorful name,” she said.

“The first time I entertained at the park it was a humbling experience,” the former Fullerton College student said. “It was hard for me to see people who were that disadvantaged. It was kind of like playing God, and I didn’t want to take on that role.”

However, she believes, “God holds all the cards, and I think God created me to make a difference in someone’s life. Before visiting the park to help, I just didn’t know how.”

Her Sunday park visits turned into gratifying experiences, she said.

“The kids are really excited when I am there. It’s a real joy to bring happiness into their lives,” said Tolbert, a secretary at Hubbell Inc., an Anaheim electrical company.

In addition to her bright get-up and balloons she inflates and transforms into animals, Tolbert gives each of the youngsters a toy to take home. The gift giving has put a serious crimp into her limited budget.

“I’m happy with what I am doing, but I don’t have the funds to give the kids all the things I’d like to give them,” Tolbert said.

“I get a lot of help, but I don’t get enough,” added Tolbert, who also sponsors two children at an orphanage in Mexico, which she often visits with food and gifts.

The Diamond Bar resident, a member of the Placentia Presbyterian Church, one of the 25 churches helping promote the Sunday offerings, said she hopes someday to establish a clown ministry.

She plans to train others as clowns to promote some happiness among homeless and hungry people.

“It’s a real joy to bring happiness into the lives of kids who really don’t have much to laugh about,” she said.

Tolbert remembers a youngster who revealed it was her birthday.

“I thought to myself how awful that a person had to stand in line for food on her birthday,” she said.

Her role as a clown at the Sunday park gathering has “given me a whole lot of satisfaction. On my epitaph I want something to say I made a difference in somebody’s life.”