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PrintFunny business with Huffy the Clown
Tom Hufford takes his fire safety lessons to television.
Tom Hufford rarely looks like himself. His face is often stark white, so pristine that the red of his curly hair explodes, matching his equally rosy nose. Add the yellow oversized pants, shiny suspenders and firefighter hat and you have a character that is hard to miss.
Clearly, it takes a lot of effort to create Hufford’s alter ego, Huffy the Clown.
His motivation? Educating children so they’ll never need his help.
“I enjoy what I’m doing, and I believe in what I’m doing,” says Hufford, an assistant Tulsa fire marshal and president of Tulsa Firefighters Educational Clowns. “I’ve been doing it now for 23 years.
“When I see a child burned or a child hurt in a car wreck or a child suffer brain damage from a bike wreck, I have this emptiness inside. How could I have prevented this?”
“Marshal Tom’s Safety Station,” a half-hour kid-friendly show on safety issues, is his way of answering that question.
“This is how we fill this emptiness. Seeing all these kids’ faces, it’s what fuels our fire,” Hufford says about the show, which airs on Cable Channel 20 up to 50 times a month in various time slots. Tulsa Public Schools, the Tulsa Fire Department, Safe Kids Coalition and Tulsa Firefighter Educational Clowns jointly produce the program.
The show incorporates a live studio audience with approximately 20 to 25 children from kindergarten to first grade. Tricks, magic and live music performances by the Pendleton Family Fiddlers help illustrate safety initiatives such as pedestrian safety, school bus safety, exit drills, crawling low under smoke, wearing bike helmets, using seat belts, teaching that matches and lighters aren’t toys and
even treating burns.
“We cover all types of public safety topics,” Hufford says. “We try to prevent as many deaths and injuries as we can.”
That has been the focus of his life as Huffy the Clown and through an educational program sponsored by the fire department called “Firefighter Tom’s Magic Safety Stage Show,” through which he made 94 presentations to 25,800 children during the 2008-2009 school year alone.
“We do as much public education safety as we can with the hours we have to give,” he says.
Statues of Huffy the Clown are being sold for $600, with half of the proceeds benefiting the Tulsa Firefighters Educational Clowns to fund additional safety programs.
Editor’s note: For more information, connect with the Tom Hufford and Marshal Tom profiles on Facebook.
