Call him a comedian, improvisationer, musician, magician, singer.

Just don’t mistake Harold “Vic” Ray for another ordinary, pie-in-the-puss, daisy-squirting clown.

“Sparkey” and “Buster” are two carefully crafted acts that represent another side of a multifaceted entertainer.

For 20 years, the Auburn man has applied the makeup, put on the colorful disguise and delighted audiences, young and old, rich and poor, large and small.

Professional clowning can be a lucrative sideshow, a hard and funny business. But for this generous man who happens to do his shtick very well, it is a passionate hobby.

“I can become an entirely different person and be accepted non-judgmentally,” Ray explained. “As an entertainer, you have to win them over. As a clown, you’ve already won them over from the beginning. It’s won, but you could lose them.”

Ray continues to captivate kids and adults at birthday parties, company picnics, garage sales, street festivals, county fairs, variety shows and in live theater. He has lifted children’s spirits at hospitals and dental offices, amused them, and from to time accidentally frightened youngsters at daycares. He has warmed hearts and evoked tears and laughter from people from all walks of life throughout the area. One night he might be doing slapstick at an affluent neighborhood gathering, the next night he’s performing a skit in a blighted housing project.

“You appreciate all these families with the same love,” said Ray, a loquacious man with a gentle soul. “It’s important to watch their eyes as I meet and greet them. Depending on the type of audience, you approach them differently. But you treat each child as a person. You become one of them. … The worst thing you can do is blow off a little kid.”

Good clowns have few boundaries. They’re usually accepted everywhere. They methodically grab and hold audiences. Ray, who studied and trained extensively to become a clown, understands this. At 64, he keeps ’em giggling.

Short and round, pug nosed, with a full face and interactive eyes, Ray looks the part. He gestures expressively with his hands. He is very much a kid at heart.

“You really have to enjoy this, and I do,” said Ray, who works with kids during the day as the head custodian at Cascade Middle School, where he has been for 26 of his 29 years with the Auburn School District. “You can be yourself and not worry about people. I can be Sparkey and Buster and Vic, but you can never drop your ‘clown face’ and you can never be out of character (when performing).

“I just love to entertain, see the smiles and make ’em laugh,” Ray said.

Chuck Henry has been in the clown business for 25 years, 15 as Ray’s cohort in comedy.

“He’s an exceptional artist in anything he does, and I wouldn’t expect anything less,” said Henry, who plays “Chuckalou.” “The pay is great, but you really live for the applause, the recognition, and that you’ve done a good job and changed somebody’s world a little bit. Any chance Vic and I get together, we put it together (to entertain).”

Born and raised in Auburn, Ray began to entertain early and often. He began playing the piano at age 4, and by age 7 was performing in front of his mother, Ruby, and their church.

Ray also picked up other instruments, beginning with the flute at age 9 and the saxophone at 15.

As an Auburn High School student, he played in the orchestra and directed the pep band. He continued to perform throughout college and with the Army Reserve National Guard Band, where he played woodwinds and sang for six years. During his service, he also studied music theory and the flute at Cornish College of the Arts.

Ray traveled the country with gospel singing groups. At one time, he even purchased a touring bus of his own and found time to play in a Seattle house band.

Back home, Ray added his versatile talents to church choir and youth groups. It was at Covington Christian Fellowship that he met his wife, Carolyn. Musically inclined, she had also toured with groups and shared friends with Ray.

The Rays became a compatible act, performing in concerts at churches throughout the Northwest. They worked exhaustively in children’s ministry, producing and directing entertainment programs for the church.

In addition, they established a balloon delivery business out of their Auburn home, which continues today with a wide clientele.

Clowning soon became a part of the act. Ray explored the idea after a pastor’s son declared he wanted to become a clown.

“I was already doing magic acts at church,” Ray recalled. “With my background and after researching it, I knew all I had to do was to learn how to become a clown.”

Ray studied clowning intensely for a year, purchasing a library of books on the profession. He attended clown school and conventions, and even worked closely with people who had been in the business. Among those personalities was Glen “Frosty” Little, a legendary clown who was in the first Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Clown College graduating class.

In time, Ray discovered that clown personalities fit his spiritual work.

“Truthfully, if you look at the family entertainers who are very good, they have a good relationship with the Lord,” said Ray, a member of Auburn’s Northwest Family Church. “They worked in churches and with children.”

The Rays belong to a small fraternity of professional clowns who perform in the area. They flourish with familiar, tried-and-true routines, good timing and instinct. They know the steps – from gags to skits, stunts to impromptu bits – with or without balloons, squirt bottles and other props.

Carolyn occasionally performs alongside Ray as “Cricket,” a whiteface clown who is often serious, all-knowing and bossy. She is the ultimate authority figure whose role is to set up situations that can turn funny. As Sparkey, Ray receives the brunt of what Cricket dishes out. As an auguste clown, Sparkey is the butt of the joke, the fool. He is clever, has a much lower status than the whiteface, but can be obnoxious and bombastic.

As Buster, Ray becomes a street clown who performs on the move, making animal balloons and interacting with people.

“He really likes people, and he’s a real talker,” Carolyn said of her husband. “The fact is we never had kids, so it’s fun for him to entertain them. He’s sort of like a grandpa. He entertains them and gives them back.”

For the Rays, clowning around can be long and arduous work, but rewarding.

“The challenge is to get them to relate to the clown, and the success is when the child can come up to you and put their arm around you and accept you,” Ray said. “Nothing is more enjoyable than when a parent brings a kid up to you and they are enthralled by you. That’s the true gift.

“From the person who looks at it from the outside, they can’t see how you would do it and enjoy it,” Ray said of enduring long, punishing hours at some appearances. “But from a person who looks at it from the inside, it’s the love and enjoyment you get from it.”

Carolyn recalls one emotional, unforgettable performance she and Ray put on for children at the Ronald McDonald House.

“It was so hard, yet it was rewarding, knowing you made a difference in a little girl’s life, even though she wasn’t going to live very much longer,” Carolyn said.

The Rays intend to stay active in the industry. Not even a recent scare, heart surgery, will keep Ray from doing his act.

“I dodged the major bullet, and now I feel fantastic,” Ray said of his admission to the hospital for a blocked artery that led to bypass surgery. “But even when I went down, I had faith and no concerns. From that experience, I am enjoying everything far, far more today.”

And that includes the ability to be a popular clown. He plans to don the wig and stick on the red nose well into retirement.

From his many experiences, Ray knows the show must go on. He knows when it’s time to send in the clowns.