After concluding a 38-year teaching career, including five years teaching in Nebraska and 33 years of service to the Boone Community School District, McCoy decided she would rather not simply retire from her job, but to retire to a new job.
"I like to be important in the life of a child," McCoy said. "And it's fun to sell smiles."
McCoy had served as a Kiwanis clown for a number of years. One year before retiring from teaching in 1992, her husband, Steve, discovered a brochure about a clown college program at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and told her she could become a real clown.
The name "Mud Hen" goes further back than McCoy's clowning days. In fact, it all started as a joke between her and her husband, and her license plate even read "Mud Hen" before she got into the act.
"Actually I was Mud Hen before I ever went to clown school because I was an Iowa farm girl," McCoy said.
When she and her husband got married, he said he would complete household duties if she took care of outside chores.
"When I would come in from outside, mud from head to toe, he said, 'You look just like an old mud hen,'" she said. "So the Mud Hen kind of stuck."
While entertaining as Mud Hen the Klown, McCoy goes before a variety of age groups, from entertaining at a preschool to brightening the days of senior citizens at retirement homes.
Touching the lives of different levels of individuals has been common throughout McCoy's life, as she taught junior high, senior high, junior college, elementary workshops and adult education. She even has taught clowns about topics ranging from marketing to having polished resumes.
"Through the 38 years I had contact with all levels and that's why in the clowning it's kind of parallel that I also reach all ages," she said.
McCoy's motto is "once a teacher, always a teacher," and in her 18 years of clowning, she has overseen workshops for young people regarding self-esteem. She said it is important that today's youth have a positive role model, like her role model who she corresponded with - Glen "Frosty" Little, who was a Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey clown. Little was inducted into the International Clown Hall of Fame in 1991.
"I thought it was so neat he would take personal time to correspond with me," she said. "I think it's important for people to have heroes and role models because it's pretty encouraging and it's a good support system."
Clown college at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse is held in the summertime for a week, and includes approximately 150 different areas of study including ventriloquism, unicycling, juggling, how to pose for a photograph, basic and advanced makeup, marketing and other business aspects.
McCoy has studied makeup and costuming at the basic, intermediate and advanced levels, as well as beginning and advanced balloon sculptures, and puppets and juggling, before she found her comfort zone in the profession.
"There's always something to learn," she said. "It kind of goes with my philosophy and the philosophy of many of continuing education and that learning is a lifelong experience."
As Mud Hen, McCoy selected an auguste face paint style, which includes flesh tones with white accents. She chose the style because it is not as stark as the whiteface style, which can sometimes be frightening for children. McCoy chose her appearance in order to appear as an approachable and caring clown.
McCoy said her job can be very rewarding, especially with the connection that her job enables her to have with children.
One child once said to her, "Mud Hen I'm going to remember you forever."
"It's just very special for them when you do something special for them," she said. "It makes the heart feel good; it's very rewarding."
Darlene McCoy, also known as "Mud Hen the Klown," can be reached for birthday parties, corporate events, picnics and reunions, weddings and celebrations, banquets and parades, and various other events by contacting her at 432-2036.
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