THE BALLOON MAN

Marshal Wild Windy Bill McKay

QUEENSBURY, N.Y. (AP) Daniel Claps, a singing cowboy in the 1940s who spent a half century “deputizing” young visitors to an upstate New York amusement park, has died.
Relatives say Claps was 90 when he died Saturday at Cobleskill Hospital in Schoharie County.
He portrayed Marshal Wild Windy Bill McKay at the Great Escape amusement park near Lake George. Dressed in a white cowboy hat and Western outfit, he entertained thousands of youngsters at the park's Ghost Town attraction each summer as he led them in capturing bank robbers and marching the bad guys off to jail.
Claps began working at the park in 1957, three years after it opened as Storytown USA. He worked until 2007.
The Westchester County native started out singing with the Roy Rogers band while serving in the Army during World War II.