Paul Pugh tries to keep his emotions in check after unveiling a sculpture of him as Guppo the clown in front of the Wenatchee Valley YMCA in October 2003. Pugh was recognized for his years of work running Wenatchee Youth Circus.
Paul Pugh tries to keep his emotions in check after unveiling a sculpture of him as Guppo the clown in front of the Wenatchee Valley YMCA in October 2003. Pugh was recognized for his years of work running Wenatchee Youth Circus.
Paul Pugh started his educational career at Wenatchee’s old Ellison Junior High in 1951.
Photo courtesy of the Pugh family
Wenatchee Youth Circus founder and longtime manager Paul Pugh is a Wenatchee legend. A sculpture of him as Guppo, his circus clown persona, greets passersby at the downtown YMCA. His community awards are many. The circus he started in 1952 continues today (after a break during the coronavirus pandemic). But Pugh’s real celebrity is in the hearts of the thousands of children and parents whose lives he impacted over the decades.
Pugh was born in Wenatchee in 1927. As a young boy, he loved circuses — watching crews set up the big top and rigging, the elephants and the performers. He would often trade his labor for admission. He was agile and good at sports, especially tumbling. During college, he learned to be a clown and spent summers clowning with the Clyde Beatty Circus.
Pugh began teaching junior high social studies and language arts in Wenatchee in 1951. He started an after-school tumbling class and soon had 65 students providing halftime entertainment for high school basketball games. Students would balance on teeter boards, perform handsprings and somersaults, and leap from springboards over pyramids of other students. In 1953, Pugh booked the club for several paid performances in Wenatchee, Chelan, Quincy and Ephrata.
He added a trampoline and low wire to the modest collection of equipment and developed more acts. The travel schedule grew. Pugh acquired a battered, old truck at a sheriff’s sale for $26 to haul costumes and equipment. Parents of the performers volunteered as chaperones and cooks. By 1957, the youth circus had become a year-round endeavor, with practices held from fall to spring and a summer tour around the Northwest and Alaska. Children ages 3 to 17 performed before crowds of thousands.
The Wenatchee Youth Circus gained national attention in 1962 with a feature in the Saturday Evening Post magazine. It performed at the Seattle World’s Fair with a roster of 85 kids, a brass band and 24 acts, and added other Western states to its travel itinerary. Several adults joined Guppo as clowns, including Chet “Chula” Endrizzi, Ed “Luko” Cadman, Harold Ottosen and Rocky Thomas. For 36 years, when the circus was on the road, Gwen Endrizzi was queen of the cook house, serving some 180,000 meals to hungry performers and chaperones each season.
Paul Pugh was kind, patient, upbeat and positive — part teacher, part showman and full-time lover of kids. He stepped down from the circus in 2010 and died in 2016, but is not forgotten.
Chris Rader is the author of “Place of Plenty: A History of Wenatchee,” in English and Spanish, available at the Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center. She also edits the museum’s Confluence magazine.
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