Susan Menard was dedicated to her work and kept performing as Silly the Clown until the effects of lupus finally won out.
Whenever Menard, who died at age 56, had a physical setback, “she treated it like a speed bump – just something to get over and go on,” said a friend, Terri Wilber of Arvada.
“She was the most resilient person I ever knew,” said Wilber, who entertains kids by twisting balloons into animals and painting faces.
“One word describes Susan: hope. On the worst days she was unimaginably positive,” Wilber said.
Menard took her optimism to the limit when she was diagnosed with glioma, which is a brain cancer, said her husband, Ron Menard of Golden.
She told friends the illness was spelled “gleeoma” – and she was concentrating on that first syllable.
Menard didn’t just dress up and clown around. She usually took props to her gigs. When performing as a princess, she’d take a miniature castle and a suitcase full of “princess clothes” for the little girls to dress up in, said Kathy Hawke, who performs as Rosie the Clown.
Menard often took small, plastic musical instruments for kids to play.
Like Wilber, she also twisted balloons and painted faces.
Beyond her own performing, she’d enlist, or sometimes cajole, her friends in the entertaining business to do charity events benefiting the Make-a-Wish Foundation and other organizations that help children.
“She was generous and good-hearted, with such an open, natural personality,” said Becky Schilling, director of volunteers for Make-A-Wish Foundation of Colorado, in Greenwood Village. “Even though she was silly, you knew she was gentle and loving. We will miss her terribly.”
Menard and Hawke started Entertainment Unlimited. Hawke did the graphics and Web design, while Menard did the marketing.
“Susan always went overboard in whatever she did,” said Hawke, adding Menard never worried about whether she made money or how the bills were paid.
Menard worked in marketing and sales at area hotels when she was a single mother, said her daughter Calee Grabinski, a florist in San Jose, Calif.
“She threw the best birthday parties,” Grabinski said.
The best advice her mother gave her, Grabinski said, was, “Do what you have talent for, even if it seems like the simplest thing.”
The local entertainment community honored Menard’s memory in a service, outfitting a mannequin with a pink wig and clown clothes.
One of her favorite outfits was a dress, pantaloons, wig, ribbons, socks and shoes, incorporating almost every color imaginable.
Susan Smithson was born in San Francisco on July 25, 1950, and graduated from high school in Idaho Falls, Idaho. She took correspondence courses in art.
In addition to her husband and daughter, she is survived by another daughter, Stephany Labrum of Warsaw, Mo.; two sons, Bill Labrum and Josh Labrum, both of Golden; four grandchildren; her mother, LaRue Fitzgerald of Ohio; and her father, Wayne Smithson of Phoenix.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
