Marking milestones is becoming old hat for Shoeloose the Clown, aka Fort Madison’s very own Gregg Brockman.
The trend continues this year as Brockman/Shoeloose prepares to mark his 50th year of clowning’ around at the Tri-State Rodeo arena.
“This will be his 50th year of being in arena. It started with him and a couple of friends riding stick horses around the arena,” said Brockman’s wife, Beverly. “It will be his 52nd year in the parade.”
She said Barbara Zumdome then made Ottie the Gooney Bird and Brockman added him to the mix at the rodeo performances.
While this will mark his 50th year at the rodeo performances and in the arena, Brockman has already made history. In 2022, he was in his 50th consecutive Tri-State Rodeo parade — a feat not shared by anyone else since the 2020 Tri-State Rodeo Parade was cancelled, compliments of the COVID pandemic. But that didn’t stop Shoeloose/Brockman. The show, or parade, must go on, and did with Shoeloose being the sole entry and doing the parade route with a police escort.
In 2022, Brockman was selected as the grand marshal of the Tri-State Rodeo Parade (for a second time) and honored by for the accomplishment by Mayor Matt Mohrfeld and the Fort Madison City Council.
Born to Clown Around
Born and raised in Fort Madison, Brockman served two tours of duty in Vietnam with the U.S. Army and had planned attend Clown College operated by Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus in Florida in 1971 and become a professional clown.
But fate and Cupid had other plans. He started dating Beverly, who would later become his wife and the mother of his two children.
Brockman, now 77, went to work and never became a professional clown, but did attend seminars, including one in Davenport put on by the Ringling Bros.. It was at these seminars where he learned makeup techniques, how to make balloon animals and how to do tricks. It was also where be bought his first pair of clown shoes.
The birth of Shoeloose
Shoeloose was born in 1973, when Brockman and some of his friends on the night before the Rodeo Parade were at the Holiday Inn in Fort Madison where a “Herbies Little German Band” was playing. The group asked the band members if they would like to be in the parade the next morning and they agreed.
Later that night, Brockman and his friends went out to find a hayrack and some bales of hay for the band to sit on and play their music throughout the parade route. Brockman also went to his cabin that night and tore out a bar and back bar to be put on the the other end of the hayrack.
Functioning on very little sleep, the friends gathered at the parade route in western attire – except Brockman. He showed up as the one and only clown. He then ended up “surfing” on a wooden plank behind the band’s hayrack riding over “anything” that might be laying in the road following a bunch of horses.
At the time there were a lot of horses throughout the whole parade and he was toward the end of the parade line.
“Needless to say, I went through many piles of you know what, entertaining thousands of people along the parade route. I was definitely christened that first year,” Brockman told Mississippi Valley Publishing in 2021.
Throughout the years
During the early years of Shoeloose’s time in the parade, the Brockmans helped build many floats, but Gregg remained the one and only clown. As such he was pulled along in many vehicles including an exploding house, a whiskey barrel, a bath tub, an inner tube, water skis, and a variety of skids.
In 1975, Shoeloose joined the grand entry at the Tri-State Rodeo. That started with Brockman and several friends on stick horses and one year that included a stick covered wagon that Brockman rode through the entry. In 1980, Brockman started riding “The Gooney Bird” in every Grand Entry.
In 1999, Shoeloose started being the “clown greeter” a couple of hours prior to each rodeo performance where he works the grandstand and rodeo arena entertaining children with rope tricks and his mimicking of nearby adults.
In 2000, Brockman had a four-bypass heart surgery, but did he miss the parade? No, he rode in a covered wagon without any wheels.
In 2005, he was named grand marshal of the parade for a first time and sat on a toilet seat labeled “The Throne.”
On Saturday, Shoeloose will be in his 52nd Tri-State Rodeo Parade and later on this week he will be marking his 50th year bringing laughs to the rodeo arena and grandstands
