If you were a child visiting UTK’s Carousel Children’s Theatre in the late 1960s and early 1970s, you may remember a clown balancing a dragonfly on your nose or leading you in a song. When I wrote about the new Jenny Boyd Carousel Theatre, one name repeatedly came up in conversations: Clarabell the Clown. I couldn’t substantiate the information at the time, so I didn’t include it. Then, a gentleman named Ed Ayres posted about his time as a child actor at the Carousel on the Knoxville Children’s Theatre article, mentioning that his mother was Clarabell.
At Urban Guy’s urging, I pursued the story and had the privilege to hear Barbara Swineford’s fascinating story. She’s lived an amazing life, and I’m only telling a small portion of it here. We started with her time working with children at UT. First, she corrected her character’s name to Carribelle, noting that Clarabell was Howdy Doody’s clown.
Carribelle the Clown
I asked how she became Carribelle. Swineford said, “well, the character was already established before I dressed the part. Evidently, whoever had played Carribelle could no longer play it, and my children had gone for interviews to be in the play at the time, and someone asked me if I could go ahead and be Carribelle for a day or so until they could find somebody. Only they never found anyone, and I stayed on for quite a while.” Swineford played the part of Carribelle Carousel (her full name) from the mid to late 60s into the early 70s.
As Carribelle Carousel, she was the warm-up act for the main plays. As buses would arrive at the Carousel, Barbara’s job was to keep the kids entertained until all the children were present. Barbara told me that she “had little band instruments…for children. We’d give them these instruments and they would march around in a circle, and I also had this little dragonfly [that] would balance on your nose. The kids seemed to like that as well.”
She’d also ask who had a birthday, bringing kids on stage to sing to them, “except one year I messed up and I said, anyone who has a birthday come on down to the stage. You can imagine what happened. Oh yeah. But we clarified it and they all went back to their seats and got them straightened out.” She recalled one major change to her look was transitioning from a red costume to UT orange and white.
Barbara worked with the director of the plays to coordinate performances. Children had two small dressing rooms, one for boys and another for girls. The rooms were so small that children dressed shoulder to shoulder. Through the Carousel, she became friends with Missy Dickey, whose daughter Dale, television and movie actress, was in the Carousel’s children’s program with her sons.
Swineford told me that “the children were in grades second through fourth or fifth and pretty much pretty well behaved most of the time. They…would become spellbound sometimes watching the play and get kind of taken up.” In a Knoxville Journal interview from August, 1970, Barbara related the story of a young boy at a performance of Cinderella becoming so distressed that she was locked in a room by the evil step-mother that he ran onto the stage, grabbed the key, and threw it to Cinderella.
Barbara added, “Overall, it was just a fun time. I think the kids loved not only getting out of school but enjoying the play.” According to the Journal article, season tickets were $1 per child with an additional charge of $1 for transportation to and from school. In addition to fairy tales, students were treated to plays like “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “Gammer Gurton’s The Needle” and the operetta “The Mikado.”
Swineford came to Knoxville via her service in the Air Force after graduating high school in Rhode Island. She met her former husband, Brown Ayres, in the military and moved with him as he returned home to Knoxville. They were both students at the University of Tennessee. Ayres eventually became a state senator. If his name seems familiar, his grandfather, also Brown Ayres, is the namesake of Ayres Hall on campus. Swineford graduated from UT with a degree in Elementary Education in 1958. She taught for a time at the Country Day School, a mostly kindergarten and first grade school. The couple had three sons: Chip, Barry and Ed, all of whom were in children’s theatre at the Carousel.
Working with children wasn’t just through school or the Carousel. Her sons were playing baseball in little league, and she noticed that there weren’t any girls playing. She started to talk with the other mothers, and having played softball in the Air Force, formed a league for girls at Rocky Hill park. During her time raising her sons, she was also president of the Knox County Republican Women’s Club.
Barbara stayed in touch with her former in-laws, who are very special to her. In fact, she said of her marriage to Merle Swineford, “On the 4th of July in 1978, my former father-in-law gave me away. And my mother-in-law came and my sister-in-law and their kids. We just still stayed family. I was never divorced from the family.” Barbara met Merle, her husband of 46 years, through a unique Knoxville event.
Wagons West
Barbara left Knoxville for Oklahoma in January, 1977 and found her way there on a wagon train. Swineford was the executive director for the 1976 Knoxville Bicentennial Commission. She coordinated all the events, including the Bicentennial Wagon Train. She told me that “when the wagon train came to Knoxville, they had problems. And, the business manager for the wagon train was Merle Swineford, who is now my husband.”
She added that taking care of problems was her duty. Mayor Randy Tyree called to tell her “something was happening at Chilhowee Park, and I think you need to get out there and find out what’s happening. And so I went out to Chilhowee Park and found Merle. All I knew about him was he had this guy with all these pins on his hat.” She said that Tyree, his wife who was nine months pregnant and she rode around until they got all of those wagons and horses settled for the night. She was afraid Tyree’s wife would have the baby in the car. A 1976 article in the News-Sentinel mentioned that the fees were waived for camping and water was provided for the 50-60 mules and horses. Thank you Alan May of Lawson McGhee for another service offered by our downtown library.
Merle took his chance with Barbara. Though Merle traveled in a GMC motorhome, he told Barbara you didn’t get a feel for the train until you rode in a wagon. When she said she didn’t have time to ride the 20 miles the wagons traveled per day, Merle responded, “well, you’re just like everybody else. You’re just not going to get the feel of it.” She finally agreed and at 8 o’clock one evening left on the Louisiana wagon from Chilhowee Park with Merle and wagon lead Beau Ledoux. She recalled his name as she loves French.
She continued meeting them, bringing their mail forwarded to the Knoxville office until they crossed the state line. Merle and Barbara got to know each other on the trail. At the same time, she was president of the Cat and Fiddle Club, who had a yearly costume ball at Deane Hill Country Club. She invited Merle as she didn’t have a date. Barbara said Merle asked “Well, what will I wear? And I just looked at him. The theme was bicentennial. And I said, oh, just wear what you’ve got on. So he came in his cowboy clothes and his hat with a million pins on top of it that he’d acquired along the way. And we had a date, you know.”
After talking on the phone at night (no cell phones then), she decided that if anything was going to come from this relationship, she had to move to Oklahoma. She arrived in January and worked in personnel at the lodge division of Oklahoma, managing five to seven lodges at the time. The couple married in 1978. I was happy to hear Merle in the background adding facts to this story as we spoke. Barbara added that “We’ve been married 46 years now. I think it’s going to take.” Merle and she both have three grown children and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Working with Oklahoma Kids
Barbara’s adventures didn’t end after she made her move west. She served as mayor of Laverne, Oklahoma, once nicknamed “the Oil Capital of Northwest Oklahoma.” She told me that she decided to step away to give younger people a voice. Her interest in helping children from her time at the Carousel continued.
Barbara (or her husband Merle; she couldn’t recall) was president of Red Carpet Country, an economic and tourist development organization when they were invited to a ball in Ponca City where they met Dale and Carolyn Smith. The Smiths had created the Little League of Entertainers, eventually naming the group Oklahoma Kids. Barbara said “the idea was to give young people an opportunity to perform. They had football and basketball and all of that, but for creative kids, there wasn’t a program. So this man helped start this program, and we were with him there from the beginning.”
Oklahoma Kids expanded to several states as American Kids. Barbara and Merle helped with the yearly competition in Branson, MO by hosting the judges and helping the children. Ed McMahon eventually became a part of the program. Barbara said, “The premise of this was pretty much the same thing as the Children’s Theatre Carousel.” Initially performing wherever they could, the program expanded across multiple states. Alumni of American Kids include Kristin Chenoweth, Carrie Underwood and Blake Shelton, who recently performed a show in Knoxville. Unfortunately, the program ended shortly after the time of Covid.
At the end of our conversation, Barbara graciously wanted to know about me, noting that I was the age of her sons. Asking about my marital status and if I had children, she said that she wanted to visit and get acquainted with me. We talked about the importance of programs like American Kids and the Carousel Theatre’s program for children with an artistic bent. After we spoke, she offered to adopt me. It was that kindness and her amazing story that made me want to introduce you to her.
Barbara hopes to travel to Knoxville when the new Jenny Boyd Carousel Theatre opens. I hope to meet her in person when she does.