Rodeo entertainer aims to motivate kids

Duane Reichert is an unassuming guy. Always has been, according to him. But that changes once he puts his makeup on. For more than 40 years, Reichert has been a rodeo clown, a bullfighter and a barrelman, which comes as quite a surprise to people who ask him what he does. “I’m used to it,” he said about people’s reactions to his profession. A lot of times, he simply says he is a rodeo entertainer. Reichert started clowning when he was a senior in high school and fell in love with it. “I loved both the cowboy protection and the crowds and went from there,” he said. He has worked in 42 states, four Canadian provinces and at nine circuit-finals rodeos in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. He has been a barrelman at the Dodge National Circuit Finals Rodeo and has worked in three National Finals Rodeo openings. Reichert is on the Contract Personnel Executive Council of the PRCA, the National Finals Rodeo Committee and the National PRCA Convention Committee. This will be the fifth year he has returned to the Denver National Western Stock Show, where he is the lead entertainer for the school tours. He speaks to thousands of children and adults each day of the stock show. For the past 20 years, school kids have gotten to know Reichert through his Backstage with a Rodeo Clown program, where he talks to kids about making the right choices in life. He developed that program after his sister-in-law, Sandy Deering, invited him to speak to children in the Douglas School System, where she taught...more