Clowns have been traced back as far as 2500 B.C. From court jesters to circus clowns, comedy skits to horror movies, we’re all familiar with clowns.
In the 20th Century there were the familiar white-faced clowns portrayed as honest, upright, and in charge to create funny situations for other characters. Bozo and Ronald McDonald made many of us smile. Then there are the zany clowns like Cookie, the Hamburglar, and Bip by Marcel Marceau. Uniquely American is the Tramp Clown covered with soot or dirt, unkempt in every way, with tattered clothes, sad demeanor, and a small blanket with his few possessions on a stick positioned over his shoulder. Poor guy could never catch a break. Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp, Emmett Kelley’s Weary Willie, and Red Skelton’s Freddie the Freeloader can be remembered by older generations.
There were bawdy clowns that appeared in circuses in the 18th Century. These were mostly adult affairs and mostly attended by males according to Madeline Steiner of the University of South Carolina. P. T. Barnum, in the late 1800’s, sought to make the circus appeal to a wider audience and eliminated sexual innuendo and rowdy and drunken behavior by employees. This is when clowns became loved by children.
In a 2008 study, according to Madeline Steiner, “clowns are universally disliked” by children today. What changed? Some writers say that it was John Wayne Gacy who posed as Pogo the clown at children’s parties and in his spare time murdered at least 33 young men and boys between 1972 and 1978 in a suburb of northwest Chicago. Others say it was Stephen King’s It featuring Pennywise a shape-shifting clown that lived in the sewers of the fictional town of Derry, Maine.
From innocence to evil, clowns have become enemies of the public preying upon the unsuspecting from the shadows. Clowns are now something thought of as to be reviled like shady used car salesmen, pay-day lenders, psychics/mediums, solar panel salesmen, lobbyists, and slimy public officials. They have become just plain creepy.
2. Hiding In The Shadows:
A quartet of our Climax Village Council Trustees voted “No” on a motion to accept the Treasurer’s report at the Village Council meeting on July 15, 2025. Bill Lewis, Denise Pyle, Carolyn Kelly, and Ben Moore did this. There was no discussion, no one gave a reason, no one gave an explanation. It appears that at least three of them had discussed voting “No” in advance and agreed out of the public eye to reject the report. The fourth, Ben Moore, just went along because he doesn’t know any better and, well, Bill Lewis and Denise Pyle are leading him.
This is what these four Council members, Bill Lewis, Carolyn Kelly, Denise Pyle, and Ben Moore do – they talk as someone you might trust while the public is watching but do their dirty work through committees and out of the public eye. They seek to avoid the light that would give the Village residents transparency and accountability.
The Treasurer’s accounts are audited by outside auditors and those auditors are always happy to answer questions or solve problems for the Council members. Rejecting the Treasurer’s report has not happened in the last 6 years and likely never happened before. Why did these Council members conspire to impugn the Village Treasurer’s honesty, competence, and reputation? Why would they be so uncaring and hurtful? Since there was no discussion and none of them is telling the voters what they are doing and why, we are left to guess at what is going on.
3. The Creepy Clowns:
To be clear, we are talking about the doings of four Council members while acting under the color of their elected offices. There is no implication beyond that. There’s no “Murder She Wrote” or “Forensic Files” here. Lewis, Pyle, Kelly, and Moore, are going about their business in those elected capacities in a harmful manner. This is causing real injury to the residents of the Village and its employees and relationships. They are doing the opposite of good as Trustees. Of course, the opposite of good is evil. They are two-faced.
The Village has great employees and there are still three Council members, Ludwig, Sutherland, and Chaney, who have the best interests of the Village at heart and can be trusted.
So, what’s going on here? What is Bill Lewis and his company of ne’re-do-wells doing in the shadows? Hard to say, but it is a pretty good bet that it involves harassing the Village Treasurer. Bill Lewis, Denise Pyle, and Carolyn Kelly must certainly realize what they’re doing. That is why they’re attempting to do it out of the public eye. Just a quick glance at each of them.
Bill Lewis has been described as a “odd duck”, among other things. Most know that his wife was the Township Clerk and that he was her Deputy. Probably not illegal, but certainly the optics were bad. Is Bill Lewis working to oust our very independent, honest, and competent Village Treasurer so that he can put his wife or one of his cronies in the position?
Denise Pyle, what is her motivation? At this point, it’s not clear. What is clear is that she is loud. Why do the people that know the least know it the loudest? She takes over discussions at Council meetings, interrupts and rolls over other Council members with her booming remarks, and speaks for Bill Lewis because he doesn’t know what to say. From pontificating about the law, where she has no education or expertise, to telling a neighbor to shut up when she and Carolyn Kelly paid a visit to the house Ben Moore lives in after the neighbor complained, she is all sound and fury signifying nothing. This is a woman who had 13 dogs and barnyard foul that stunk so badly her neighbors complained and the Village had to take her to court before she’d clean it up.
What about Ben Moore? He just goes along with Lewis, Pyle, and Kelly and is happy to get $200 a month from the taxpayers for being a Council member. The entire Village knows his story and he is now the majority vote on the Council.
Then, the fourth in the quartet is Carolyn Kelly. Kelly has a history on the Council. She harassed the Village’s former Treasurer and the men of the DPW. It got so bad that President Jim Cummings prohibited Kelly from communicating with the Treasurer and the men of the DPW. Kelly did not stop. It finally came to a head in December of 2023 when the then Treasurer informed the Council that she would quit if she had to deal with Carolyn Kelly again.
The Council members themselves had been the victims of Kelly’s abuse. In the first week of December 2023, all of the Climax Village Council Trustees asked President Cummings to request that Carolyn Kelly resign from the Council and if she refused:
“… to remove Trustee Carolyn Kelly from her chairmanship of the water committee and to firmly establish the parameters of Trustee Carolyn Kelly’s power and authority should she refuse to resign.”
Carolyn Kelly refused to resign.
Carolyn Kelly demonstrated an obsession with obtaining access to the Treasurer’s computer and water accounts after she was appointed to the Village Council and assigned as chair of the water committee before the 2022 election. She has now been assigned by Bill Lewis as the chair of the Ordinances, Zoning, Planning & Development Committee. But by her remarks in Council meetings and vague, nonsensical complaints, she appears to still want to stick her nose into the property tax and water accounts. There is no good reason for her to know how much water individual residents use or how much individual residents are billed or who gets shut off or who’s paying the bill. She has no justifiable need for such information or, heaven forbid, access to the Treasurer’s computer and all the personal information of residents that the computer holds.
Our Village Treasurer appears to be the object of an effort to get her to do something she shouldn’t or to remove her for reasons unrelated to the best interests of the Village. This is government in the shadows. But, none of it is “secret” under Michigan law. Personnel matters in Villages are not protected from public view except in situations not applicable here. Instead of skulking around to achieve their goal, the “Creepy Quartet” should declare themselves and take up matters with our employees at public meetings, in the open, and under the public eye. The employees work for us, the residents of the Village of Climax.
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