Rodeo clown tackling school bullies

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Marvin Nash — aka Starvin' Marvin — has been a professional rodeo clown for some 30 years, entertaining fans and protecting bull riders at great risk to himself. He routinely taunts bulls that outweigh him by more than 1,000 pounds.

"I just dare him to run over me," Nash says. "I'm just bullying the bull, I guess."

Yet his biggest fight may lie outside the ring, where Nash is confronting what to some is an opponent just as intimidating: childhood bullying.

Hoping to prevent the kind of violence that has erupted on school campuses in recent years, Nash has developed his "Bullying Hurts" program that emphasizes youth mentoring and nonviolence. The program has been taught in some 300 schools in 37 states.

"So many people think that bullying is just a rite of passage," Nash said. "Kids have feelings, too. And so that's what we try to do is help them channel and be able to discuss and find a solution that works for them."

The goal is to help kids learn to handle bullying at a young age, so they are less likely to explode into violent retaliation later. In addition, young bullies might come to realize their antics are hurtful and stop before they become too destructive.

"That's the key to the whole thing, that violence is never the answer," Nash said.

Nash, who at 53 is close to retiring from the rodeo arena, is a fixture every summer at the annual Cowtown Rodeo near the small New Jersey community of Sharptown, just south of Philadelphia.

He grew up in Texas and took up clowning after realizing he wasn't a very good rodeo cowboy. A rodeo contractor nicknamed him "Starvin' Marvin" after Nash joked that if he didn't find work as a rodeo clown, he'd starve.

"I've always liked the comedy part of it and that kind of stuff," said Nash, who speaks with an easy Texas drawl and a slight whistle since chipping a tooth in the ring.

Nash became interested in helping kids after speaking to his son's grade-school class about being a rodeo clown and discovering he enjoyed speaking to young people.

At first, he spoke to kids about drugs. But he switched to the anti-bullying campaign about four years ago after the wife of an acquaintance suggested school bullying was the root of many problems for youths.