Pepper the Clown Returns to Sewanee

by Bailey Basham, Messenger Intern
A little more than 40 years ago, Kim Bres-Kelley stood at her mailbox in Salinas, Calif., with a letter from her mother in her hand.
Bres-Kelley opened the letter to find a picture of her mother, Betty Scott Bres, dressed as a clown.
“I couldn’t figure out why she had sent me a picture of a clown, until I read the letter,” said Bres-Kelley. “It was a bit of a surprise— I couldn’t quite believe that my mom was a clown, but it seemed like something she would do.”
Betty Scott Bres, then 50-years-old, had been working as a disaster preparedness instructor for the Girl Scout Council and American Red Cross in Las Vegas and volunteering in hospitals with the Friendship Force before she made the decision to go to clown school. At that point, Pepper the Clown was born.
Forty-two years later, the Sewanee native is returning for a visit to her beloved birthplace on July 2.
Betty, who was born and raised on the domain, attended St. Mary’s and Otey Parish as a child and loved exploring the University’s campus as a teenager with her sister, Louise— especially since it was an all-male college at the time.
“She and her sister would ride their bicycles all over, riding out to St. Mary’s and The Cross. They loved watching the storms coming up the mountain and made a game out of racing home before they got wet,” said Kim. “She learned to drive in a Model-T on the old gravel roads. She acquired a small red truck powered by a lawn mower engine that she drove in the parades in Sewanee.”
Betty’s son Scott Bres echoed his sister’s stories about their mother’s love of Sewanee.
“She loved going to the grocery store and buying a penny candy to share with her sister Louise, and she would tell us stories of her father inviting some of his students over to the house for dinner,” said Scott.
When she was younger, Betty would go to Chattanooga to watch the circus when it came to town. Her son Scott said he thinks that’s when the seed was planted.
“Her father (John Mark Scott) was a chemistry professor at University of the South, and he told her that she had to get a bachelor’s degree first, then she could do what she felt like. That is one of the reasons she had to delay pursuing her dream of becoming a professional clown,” said Scott.
Betty was a member of the Friendship Force, an organization whose mission it is “to promote global understanding across the barriers that separate people,” according to the network’s website.
For Betty, one way she found to live out the mission of the Friendship Force was to dress up as Pepper the Clown and to entertain kids and adults all over the world—Las Vegas, Ohio, Brazil, Australia, Russia and Korea all bore witness to Pepper’s upbeat, positive attitude and her ability to put a smile on anyone’s face. According to Scott, when traveling abroad with the organization, Betty could often be heard saying, “While we may not understand each other’s native language, everyone speaks Clown.”
“As soon as she put on her face and gloves, she was no longer Betty— she was Pepper the Clown,” said Scott. “When Betty was Pepper the Clown, she was very happy and she tried to make everyone else happy too. The only thing that mattered was that she could bring joy and make people smile, if only for a moment, no matter where she was or what their circumstances.”
Betty hung up her clown shoes— and her duck-on-a-stick that she would walk alongside in the halls of the hospitals she visited— a little less than 10 years ago. Her son Scott repurposed them, and they now live on his bookshelf as bookends.
Betty and her sister Louise Lee will be visiting Sewanee from July 2–5. To coordinate a visit with Pepper the Clown or for more information about her homecoming, the Bres family can be reached at <GroomerKim@aol.com>.