Soldier loves to apply makeup, act stupid

The master sergeant made balloon animals to cheer Iraqi children in Kirkuk.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- It had been four months, so when the door opened and the guys in camouflage came through, people cheered. They cried. They waved their American flags and their "welcome home" banners.
After all the attacks in Kirkuk, all that time away, everyone was home safe. The families and friends standing at Gate B35 at Port Columbus International Airport could exhale.
Then Master Sgt. Matthew Roach walked out.
In the middle of all this emotion, the release of all this anxiety, it was hard to take your eyes off the rubber chicken strapped to his pack.
There's a clown in every group.
Roach's colleagues tease him. He's a civilian firefighter at Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base in central Ohio and, when he's deployed, he's a military firefighter with the Guard's 121st Air Refueling Wing. He's a veteran of Desert Storm and now the war in Iraq, and one of his great passions is putting on makeup and acting stupid.
"He gets some funny looks around here when he dresses up before he leaves for a party," said Dave Patterson, a firefighter and medic at Rickenbacker who works with Roach.
The makeup thing started in high school, when Roach wore costumes to work at haunted houses. He even owned a haunted house in Columbus' Brewery District for a couple of years. He had to work on his face to scare the customers, a kind of reverse preparation to be a clown.
About four years ago, he was visiting patients at Columbus Children's Hospital, as firefighters sometimes do. Roach didn't cheer the kids very much, but then some clowns came through.
"The kids were sad, and then they were happy," Roach said, and that was enough for him.
He joined the Freemasons fraternal organization and later as a Master Mason could become a Shriner. Shriners are famous for children's hospitals, circuses and clowns. Roach, 33, trained to be a Shrine clown for several months and emerged as Bug-A-Boo (a play on his last name and his haunted-house history).
A good clown does not just paint his face and talk in a goofy voice. Roach calls those clowns "ugly clowns," and the particularly bad ones "hideous clowns."
It takes time to learn how to make balloon animals and to do magic tricks. Children want to squeeze your nose. A good clown knows how to let the kids squeeze without taking the nose with them.
"A clown's worst nightmare is a nose falling off," Roach said recently at his Columbus home, where he spent 45 minutes making up his face for a party.
When he's done putting on his face, he starts on his daughter Hannah's. She goes by the clown name of Little Boo. She's 10 and heading into the fifth grade. She helps her father when she can, and she gets a cut of his $100-an-hour fee.
"If they're scared of me, they'll go up to Hannah, because she's their size," Roach said.
Nicole, who keeps a sign in the kitchen that reads "My Next Husband Will Be Normal," packs the drinks. It's 90 degrees outside.