Parade Clown Is A Kid At Heart
by austin h. armistead

Marching along in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was Jackson Heights resident and community leader, Joseph Ricevuto, grandpa of seven and still a kid at heart. Ricevuto thinks he may be one of the longest running Macy’s clowns on record.

Ricevuto and his wife Teena, started taking their son Joseph, and daughter Maryann to the parade over 35 years ago. "We never missed, rain, cold, snow," he declared.

Joe often told his children, "I would love to be a clown in the parade." His daughter remembered and 20 years later called Macy’s to see if her father’s dream could come true. She also wrote to Jean McFadden, parade director. After an interview, Joe was called to be a clown in 1984. He couldn’t sleep for two nights before the parade.

He got up at 3 a.m. and arrived at 5 a.m. for a 6 a.m. appointment to make up as a clown. He still gets butterflies in his stomach on Thanksgiving Eve, and still gets up at 3 a.m. He is always one of the first clowns to arrive for parade duty. He has been an old-time cop, a corn-on-the-cob, a candle and a court jester during his clown career.

Reporting for duty on Thanksgiving morning, in Ricevuto’s own words: "You dress in your costume, make-up artists apply your clown make-up and then you get to the wig station for your blue, orange or yellow wig. Then onto a bus that takes you to the clown corner at 77th Street and Broadway. Thousands of clowns are there and the excitement is at a high pitch."

Once on his corner: "I shake hundreds and hundreds of hands and play with the kids. You see the faces of thousands of people, and oh! those little children, that’s what makes it the most exciting and rewarding time of my life. I yell out to everyone, ‘Are you having a good time?’ I have been picked out twice to be on television news. They said I was the most exciting and ambitious clown going down the parade route. My seven grandchildren come to see their clown grandpa. They look at me in disbelief and excitement."

His family has always been enthusiastic about Ricevutos’ clown assignment in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. "My late wife Teena was always there to see me. She put up with her clown husband and got excited along with me," he said. Maryann has videotaped her father and the parade for the past 18 years and photographs Joe in his clown costume for his annual Christmas card.

Every year Joe sends his clown Christmas card to Macy’s and thanks them for making him the happiest clown in the world! "Eighteen years ago, I sent a card to Alyson Bristol. She was a young secretary at Macy’s Now as vice-president, she still has my photo on her desk 18 years later. That was wonderful to hear and know," Ricevuto said.

Ricevuto hopes that he can continue to be a clown in the Thanksgiving parade for many years to come. "It makes me the happiest person in the world. I still can’t sleep the night before, and that makes for a happy and excited grandpa-to be a Macy’s clown!"

Ricevuto limbers up with some stretching and bending before the parade starts.

At clown corner at last.