Kevin Clash and Elmo

Kevin Clash gets a kiss from his daughter, Shannon, 14, who spent years thinking Elmo was her brother.

Kevin Clash recently spent more than three hours at the Catonsville Library, greeting fans and autographing his new book, 'My Life as a Furry Red Monster.'

Nobody needs to tell Kevin Clash how to get to Sesame Street.

For the
past 20 years, Clash, born and raised in Baltimore County, has been the voice
and the puppeteer behind Elmo — Elmo, of course, being the furry little red
monster from “Sesame Street” who is known and loved by millions of children
around the globe.

As Elmo’s alter-ego, the 46-year-old Clash has
worked on numerous movies and TV specials; traveled the world; become
producer of “Elmo’s World,” a popular “Sesame Street” segment; and written a
book: “My Life as a Furry Red Monster: What Being Elmo Has Taught Me About
Life, Love and Laughing Out Loud.”

Says Clash, who clearly knows a good
thing when he sees it: “That little red monster has taken me around the
world. It’s been a lot of fun.”

Here’s how tight Kevin and Elmo are: His
14-year-old daughter, Shannon, swears she thought Elmo was her brother
when she was little. “It wasn’t till I was older that I realized he was a puppet,”
she says.

If the discovery was a disappointment, it was more than made
up for by what she concedes was a privileged childhood. “I grew up at Sesame
Street. I got to go places other kids didn’t,” she says. “As a kid, I’d be running
around in Big Bird’s nest.”

Clash appeared at the Catonsville Library
recently, answering questions from an enthusiastic crowd and signing copies
of his book. The visit, which included an appearance by the furry red monster
himself, was a smash hit: At least 200 children and their parents (and a
smattering of teenagers) packed the library’s meeting room, squealing with
joy when Elmo showed up.

“I was absolutely blown away — we’ve never
had anything like that happen before,” says Maggie Schorr, president of the
Friends of the Catonsville Library, which arranged the visit. “It was a mob
scene. Elmo obviously touches a chord with grownups and kids alike.”

The appearance was something of a homecoming for Clash, who has
lived in New York City since he was 19 but who grew up in Turners Station.
His parents and sisters still live in the Baltimore area, as does daughter,
Shannon. All five were at the Catonsville Library to hear Kevin speak.

His
parents are not surprised by Kevin’s success. From an early age, they knew
their boy — who preferred drawing to sports and fashioning puppets in his
room to hanging around with friends — had artistic talent and a flair for
entertaining.

“He was always drawing, and he started making puppets
when he was about 10,” recalls mom, Gladys. One day, the couple came home
to find their son had fashioned a monkey puppet out of the fleece lining from
his father’s good winter coat. Both parents were too impressed to be angry.

“I could see he had something special from when he was a young boy,”
Gladys says.

Kevin, in turn, credits his parents with his crafty instincts —
his father loved to draw and his mother sewed beautifully. As for his love of
puppetry, he says that can be attributed to hours of sitting inches away from
a TV screen as a child, enchanted by the likes of Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Shari
Lewis and Lamb Chop and, of course, “Sesame Street.”

“That’s really how
I got interested,” he says. “Just watching television.”

As the years passed,
young Kevin made increasingly elaborate puppets — a whole cast of
characters, with names like Hamburger Hungry and Goriddle Gorilla. His
talent made him a hot commodity at local birthday parties, where he was
often the hired entertainment. When he had no parties booked, he would
hang a sheet over the clothesline and stage shows in his own backyard. His
mother ran a daycare program out of their home, so Kevin almost always had
a ready audience.

“The kids loved those shows,” recalls his father,
George. “I enjoyed them myself.”

Young Kevin also was a talented artist
and actor, according to his parents, starring in his high school productions.
But it was puppetry that he loved and puppetry that would make him famous
– or at least his work.

While still a student at Dundalk High School,
Clash caught the eye of Baltimore TV legend Stu Kerr, whom he calls his first
mentor. Kerr signed the teenaged Kevin up as the puppeteer for his 1970s
children’s show on WMAR, “Caboose.”

Still with no formal training, Kevin
was soon working with Bob Keeshan (better known as Captain Kangaroo) and,
eventually, Kermit Love and Jim Henson, the geniuses behind “Sesame Street”
and the Muppets.

“I learned it all from working with Jim and the others,”
Clash says. “I was a sponge.”

He became a puppeteer on “Sesame Street”
in 1984. The following year, after voicing such characters as Hoots the Owl
and Dr. Nobel Price, he took over as the voice and the hands behind the then-
fledgling character of Elmo. Twenty-two years later, Elmo remains one of the
most endearing characters on children’s television. And Kevin, now burly and
middle-aged, is still the high-pitched voice behind little, red, perpetually 3-
year-old Elmo.

As Kevin admits, Elmo and his puppetry have taken him
places a Dundalk boy could only dream of going — to appearances in China,
South America and Europe; to work on such big-screen films as “Labyrinth,”
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “Muppet Treasure Island;” and to
receiving national recognition in the form of a handful of Emmys.

Most
recently, his work has made him an author. Last year, he published what
amounts to a fond memoir of his early days in Baltimore, a youth spent with a
loving, supportive family, and how he grew up to be the man behind the red
monster.

In the book, Clash describes his life as “a real life fairy tale,
complete with rise from obscurity to fame.” It is a warm, largely upbeat, fast-
paced book, with chapters with titles like “Joy,” “Friendship” and “Optimism.”
But it doesn’t shy away from serious issues. Clash writes of the pain of
breaking up with his wife and the worries about how that would affect their
daughter. Clash, who is black, also writes of racism, recalling how he was
asked to “step down” from the leading role in a high school play because it
would involve kissing a white girl. (He refused.)

Clash says he wrote the
book in part to inspire others to become puppeteers. “It’s a great field — I’d
love for other people to do it.”

Clearly less than comfortable talking
about himself, Clash says (and you believe he means it) that perhaps Elmo
should have written the book. “Elmo’s much more popular than me,” he
explains. “I think if Elmo wrote a book, he could sell a lot more copies.”

Meanwhile, back at the Catonsville Library, Kevin and Elmo are still
signing autographs and chatting with fans. The line waiting to see them (to
see Elmo, really) is still long, but diehard fans are not discouraged. After all,
the chance to see Elmo in, um, person does not come along every day.

“When I saw it in the paper that Elmo was going to be here, I said to my
husband, ‘We’re going’,” says Beth Weintzweig of Baltimore, who was waiting
with her two daughters, Ava, 8, and Lily, 2. “It almost seemed too good to be
true.”

The wait, she says, is nothing. “They love Elmo,” she explains of
her daughters. “They’ve been major fans since Day One — and I am, too.”

Judging from the popularity of Elmo — and the soaring career of Turners
Station’s Kevin Clash — they are far from the only ones.