TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE: WOMAN SIGNS UP TO VISIT SIBERIAN PATIENTS AS A CLOWN

Ellen Dillon took her two children to the Show Me Center last April because they wanted to hear the unorthodox physician portrayed by Robin Williams in the movie "Patch Adams." Dressed in a clown costume, Patch Adams prescribed humor and joy as ways for caregivers to connect with people who are sick.

At the end, Adams invited members of the audience to sign up for his Gesundheit! Institute's next clown trip: visiting orphanages, hospitals and prisons in Siberia, a region of Russia that is larger than Canada. That night, Dillon phoned motels searching for Adams and woke him up to talk.

He told her the trip will break her heart.

She leaves for Russia Aug. 17.

"It was one of those things where you wish you couldn't" go, she said.

She felt compelled to go by the death of her sister, Lynn, a year ago. A lay nun associated with the Benedictines, Lynn was a paraplegic who at one time was in the Wyoming House of Representatives, mediated disputes between the government and Native Americans and championed children's causes.

"I needed to do something big, something to convert the void she left," Dillon explained.

Dillon, who lives in Cape Girardeau, and 19 others from around the world signed up for the trip. All are paying their own way. Two are from Italy, two are from Australia, one is from Denmark. One is a reverend, one is a reverend/Realtor/nurse. Many have never clowned before.

Picking a persona

Dillon has a master's degree in theater but has never played a clown before. Picking a persona was the first step. Her first choice was Golf Clown but she realized that many of the children she will encounter probably don't know what golf is. They might never have seen a clown. She doesn't want to scare them.

"A lot of the kids are very sick," she said. "They might not respond well to us."

Flower Power Clown seemed to reflect her peaceful nature. She will cover her blond hair with a Raggedy Ann wig and don flowered get-ups and multi-colored house shoes.

Their destinations include Ulan Udi, Siberia's Buddhist center, and Irkutsk, a trading community. "These are places that are forgotten not only by the world but by their own government," she said. The clowns also will have the opportunity to see some sights in St. Petersburg.

Adams will not accompany the clowns to Siberia. His assistant, Kathleen (Beach Clown) Crewes, will go. Crewes, an X-ray technician, has led groups of clowns with and without Adams to Russia 10 times, Haiti twice, to refugee camps in Kosovo and in Africa, and to El Salvador, China and Korea.

Medications are scarce in Russia, Crewes says, and many children and adults with diabetes die because there is not enough insulin. "A lot of the children and adults we see, they will not make it," Crewes said from her home in Arlington, Va.

The clowns will encounter many people who are in a great pain because of the lack of medications, but taking medications with them is deemed too dangerous because of the black market.

"Our way of healing is humor," Crewes said. "We love and we hug and make everybody feel better. We can make kids forget they're patients, even if it's just for one hour."

Clown secrets

Dillon and Beach Clown and have talked by phone almost every day leading up to their departure. There are two secrets to being a clown, Crewes says. "You have to be totally in your heart and in the moment. Those two go together."

"I never know what I'm going to do when I go in that room. Children don't care if I can juggle. If they feel like sitting on you, they sit on you. My goal is to give them what they need."

The experience is transformational for everyone involved, she said. "Our goal is to go and spread joy and cheer, not only to patients but to the workers and everyone in our pathway."

Dillon's children, 13-year-old Jeremy and 9-year-old Cecilia, seem overpowered by the effect sick children in Siberia have had on their mother's life. She didn't join them on a recent family vacation to Wyoming and will still be in Siberia when they start school. They've let on to some worries.

"Isn't there a war going on?" Jeremy asked one day.

"There's a war going on in Cincinnati," his mother answered.

Dillon's husband, Dr. Robert Dillon Jr., is an associate professor in the theater department at Southeast. A Buddhist, he is more sanguine, she says. "As a Buddhist, he believes that all things are connected. I want to experience that connection."

Dillon's friends, high school and college classmates and family members contributed more than $5,000 to send her to Siberia. She jokes about not taking it personally.

"They all said, I would love to go on this trip but I never would,'" she said. "I'm like a surrogate traveler."

Only certain things in life fall together as easily as this mission to Siberia, she said. "Even if it ended in catastrophe, I would not regret it."