Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Harris plays a saxophone during a break in rodeo action Friday in Salem. He has been named rodeo clown of the year four times by a rodeo cowboys association.

Rodeo clown Lecile Harris, 72, puts on his makeup for this year's Kroger/Valleydale rodeo in Salem, where he was tossed by a bull a year ago.

Rodeo clown Lecile Harris (right) performs Friday with his son, Matt Harris, during the Kroger/Valleydale Championship Rodeo in Salem. The elder Harris has been performing in rodeos since 1955.

Ethel Harris watched her husband fly through the air.

His altitude peaked at about 15 feet.

At that height, Lecile Harris was level with his wife's row inside the Salem Civic Center. His flight both horrified and transfixed her.

"It was the eeriest, strangest thing I've seen in my whole life," Ethel Harris recalled Friday. "It was oddly gorgeous, in a macabre sort of way."

At the time, just about one year ago, nationally celebrated Hall-of-Fame rodeo clown Lecile Harris was 71 years old. Serving as the event's comedy clown, he focused on entertaining and rousing the arena crowd.

Years ago, he had stopped sprinting around dirt arenas with clown colleagues who -- both to protect bucked-off riders and to please the audience -- distracted angry bulls.

Seconds before Harris' launch, Ethel Harris and other fans sat anticipating the rodeo's final matinee performance.

A riderless, 1,600-pound, fighting Brahma bull waited, too.

So did the younger bullfighter clowns, who planned to taunt the animal and deftly escape the bone-snapping collisions known as "wrecks."

A boy named Lecile

Roughly 12 months have passed since that January afternoon.

Lecile Harris returns to perform this weekend for the Kroger/Valleydale Championship Rodeo at the Salem Civic Center.

On Friday morning, wearing a black cowboy hat and blue jeans, Harris sat for an interview in the lobby of a Days Inn in Salem. He's 72 now, lean and lanky, carrying about 200 pounds on a 6-foot-5-inch frame.

The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association has honored him four times as rodeo clown of the year. He is also an association Hall of Famer.

Harris walks with a slight limp, which, considering everything he's been through, seems not too bad.

"I was born in the back end of a grocery store in Lake Cormorant, Mississippi," he said. "I guess I really had a good doctor, but he couldn't spell too good. There was a mistake in the birth certificate. It was supposed to be Cecil.

"I hated it my whole life. Sounds like a girl's name. I learned to fight pretty early, like the second grade. But it turned out to be a really good clown name, because people remembered it."

Years ago, while participating with country music singer Boxcar Willie in a radio interview, Willie disclosed offhand that his given name was Lecile, the result of another flubbed birth certificate.

"I thought it was a joke," Harris said.

No joke

Rodeo owner and producer Bobby Rowe has pitched numerous rodeos at the Salem Civic Center.

Rowe said Harris, who lives in Tennessee, is a great draw and a good friend.

"He's a true professional and a crowd pleaser. He handles himself real good."

On Jan. 6, 2008, Harris entertained the audience during the lull before the Brahma bull stormed out of the gate.

"I had just started a song. I had turned to one side of the crowd and had them clapping, and then I turned to the other side.

"I rarely ever turn my back on the chute."

The gate man misinterpreted a nod from a bullfighting clown and turned the animal loose. It charged directly toward the unsuspecting Harris.

"The bull was wide open when he hit me. I never saw him."

Hard landing

"These bulls are muscle and bone. They're agile as cats to be the size they are. He hit me just below my belt line. A few inches higher and he would have broken my back all to pieces."

The splayed horns missed him. The bull lifted its head and propelled Harris skyward.

"Things happened so fast. I remember trying to turn in the air so I would land right when I came down, which I obviously couldn't do. I came down straight on my head.

"I think I hit the only rock in the arena. Knocked a hole in my scalp about the size of a doorknob."

Ethel Harris expected that her husband would pop right up like he had done so many times before. When he did not, she rushed to him.

Lecile Harris' injuries included a crushed shoulder blade, torn back muscles, a concussion, a fractured vertebra and bruised internal organs.

As bad as the injuries were, he had suffered worse during his rodeo career.

"It's a ways down the list," he said.

Less than a month later -- while "all braced up," he said -- Harris worked a rodeo in Albuquerque, N.M.

Rodeo man

The whole adventure began in 1955 when, on a lark, Harris rode a bull momentarily in a small amateur rodeo.

"My buddy and I had heard there were some really good-looking girls over there," Harris recalled.

That was before Ethel.

Lecile and Ethel Harris have been married more than 50 years and have three children.

Ethel Harris once hoped her husband would someday leave the circuit.

"When we were first married, I thought he would forget all about rodeo and get a regular job like everybody else," she said. "When I asked him why he wouldn't quit, he said, 'I think it's about time you realize rodeo is what I want to do.' "

Since then, she has backed him all the way.

"I don't know how in the world he will ever walk away from rodeo. He'll just die right there in the arena, and I'll plant flowers over him."

Maybe one of his jokes will do him in. Lecile Harris said stand-up is dangerous duty, too.

"There's a little bit of glory when a bull hits you and they carry you out of the arena. When a joke falls flat, there's no glory at all. You just want to dig a hole."