Dr. Silly

When Tony Palumbo found himself at a puppet play in France, his life changed.

“I saw how these two little dolls mesmerized even the adults, and I had an epiphany,’’ he recalls. “I said, ‘I want to do that.’’’

That was 1984, and one of those moments no one could have anticipated—certainly not Palumbo or any of his former colleagues in academe. The professor, who had taught in universities around the world, abandoned academia to study at the French Marionette Academy and work as a puppeteer in the French circus. Some assumed he’d had a mental collapse. “I was either losing my mind or gaining my soul,’’ he says.

Time has proven the latter to be the case, and troubled children in the United States and abroad are thankful for Palumbo’s wonderful madness. Most kids know the 60-year-old puppet man as Dr. Silly, a persona he’s created to make therapy less threatening to children who are homeless, hospitalized, or traumatized. Convinced that play is the key to healing and personal growth, Dr. Silly uses puppets to help kids learn to laugh and be themselves.

“Puppets are magical and powerful,’’ Palumbo says. “They span psychology and art: Look at Punch and Judy or Jim Henson’s Muppets. I use puppets to illustrate behaviors and get across values to kids, and I put sugar on it so the message goes down.’’

Investing his own funds in the effort and driven by his convictions, Palumbo has worked to advance the use of puppets as therapeutic and educational tools in the United States. After studying and performing in France, Palumbo returned to his home in West Barnstable, Mass., and worked in a homeless shelter and at a school for children with disabilities to earn enough money to launch the nonprofit Puppet Therapy Institute.

Palumbo has created modified puppets that children with motor impairments can use; one of those allows quadriplegic children to operate the puppet simply by blinking their eyes. “That project was like a mania for me,’’ Palumbo says. “I spent years in the cellar working on it.’’

Since then, he’s transformed old buses into mobile play centers that travel into low-income neighborhoods where children have little access to play therapy. He’s converted his 80-acre property in Vermont, dubbed The Funny Farm, into a summer camp for children with disabilities and adults interested in learning about puppet therapy. And, convinced of the power of humor to heal, he’s launched the Children’s Radio Network, which broadcasts light-hearted programs with a message. “I want to make destroyed kids smile, or what’s the purpose of life?’’ he asks.

Sometimes his victories are small. He helped lift one seriously depressed foster child out of her trauma by tape recording her as she sang country songs and supervising her as she proudly drove one of his brightly painted school buses around a parking lot to celebrate her 12th birthday. Three years later, she e-mailed Palumbo to tell him she was reading to children at a library on Saturday mornings, a sign of her own healing.

Palumbo is acutely aware of the two legacies he wants to leave with his work. The first is “people who laugh together grow together.’’ The second is the idea that children today need to learn how to be brave. Many people confuse bravery with “Rocky’’-style bravado, but it’s everyday life, he says—maintaining your health, helping others, enduring at home, daily getting dressed and going out to do battle, and holding on to the will to survive—that constitutes true bravery.

Palumbo believes puppet therapy is a key to opening the locked doors of so many traumatized children.

“The main purpose of all therapy,” he says, “is so that we can enjoy each other.’’

Pamela Rohland is a frequent contributor to American Profile.

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