CHARLES
E. WINDLEY, McLean High School 1960
(1942 - 16 Dec 2017)
Magicians are a natural fraternity, a society of secrets,
initiation is required. Within that fraternity,
Chuck Windley was legendary.
There was no obituary for
Charles "Chuck" Windley at his funeral home. I wrote this biography as a tribute.
This is not the only tribute to Chuck's from his high school classmates.
Since then, the magician community has swung into action to honor Chuck.
A wonderful tribute by fellow magician Robert Baxt appears after this
biography,
along with comments by more of us who were his classmates at McLean High School, 1960.
-----=o0=-----
It has been difficult for me to piece
this biography together, and I am happy to have corrections and more
information.
jerry-va@speakeasy.net
Jerry Nelson, McLean HS '60, Classmate
-----=o0=-----
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH FOR CHUCK WINDLEY
Charles E. Windley, 75, passed away
December 16, 2017 after a battle with cancer. His roots were in
Norfolk; he had lived in Williamsburg since June 2011.
Chuck's mother remarried and the
husband's business brought them up from Norfolk to the metro DC
area. Chuck graduated from McLean High School in 1960, and from
American University in 1962 (a two-year masters program?) with a degree
in speech and drama. When asked how performing magic has helped him, he
said, "I got into magic originally because I stuttered." Ten
years later his public speaking was flawless. He married Lisa at
this time (1962-1964ish) and had one daughter.
To his high school classmates, Chuck
spoke of his first wife Lisa from 1962 college days. In the magic
community, his wife was Shirley from the mid 1970s, and the daughter,
Saida Dawn Windley, is -- incorrectly, I think -- said to be Shirley's,
not Lisa's.
I presume Chuck is survived by his
daughter, Saida Dawn Windley, and perhaps his brother Donald Windley of
Stuarts Draft, VA (2004).
In the 1970s, he and his wife
(Shirley) worked on a course for use in open school classrooms.
Magic is a good tool for learning, he said, because it encourages
student to seek their own answers to problems, and to create new
ideas. A series of study guides ("Teaching and learning with
magic" were published.
BOOKS
Charles Windley, Teaching
& learning with magic (Acropolis Books, Invitation to learning
Series No. 4), 1976.
Charles Windley, Comedy in Magic. Souvenir program and secrets of
magic. (NY: Magic Masters), 1978.
"40+
years ago I was using his system to promote
fund raisers in elementary schools.
Very innovated Guy"
--jakeg
http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=655871
CHAPTER 1:
CHILDHOOD START, YOUNG ADULT APPRENTICESHIPS
"How did you become
interested in magic," a reporter asked Chuck, who was in a hurry to set
up for a show. "At the age of nine, Santa Claus gave me a magic
kit." The real answer is far richer.
CHUCK WINDLEY ON HIS CHILDHOOD
START IN MAGIC
source: "Backstage: A Journal for
Magicians," Inaugural Issue, January 1982.
[The website magicmore.com is long gone. Try the WayBackMachine
on archive.org, and donate to
this non-commercial miracle while you are there:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030820203120/http://www.magicmore.com:80/BACKSTAGE%201.htm ]
My first experience with a magic shop
was "The" Magic Shop in downtown Norfolk, Virginia. I don't mean
last year. I refer to 1951. It was called the Edmar Magic
Shop in those days [Earl Edwards' store on Granby Street]
GOING OUT WITH GRANDPA
- I was nine and my grandfather and I had a Saturday morning
ritual. We would sneak out of the house (letting my grandmother
sleep late) and head for breakfast at Peoples Drug Store on Granby
Street; then to a movie at the Lowes. This was followed by a visit to
the trick store. Pop would give me a half dollar to spend and it
usually took about an hour to decide which miracle to buy. There
were a hell of a lot of thirty-five and fifty cent tricks to choose
from in those days. There still are except now they cost five
bucks.
I remember once seeing a trick in the
showcase with a price tag of $2.00. "Who in the world would spend two
whole dollars for just one trick?" I wondered. I thought of that
incident last year as I handed Recil Bordner a check for $1,800.00 for
my new Bloodless Amputation illusion.
LESSONS, THEN DEMONSTRATING ALL THE MAGIC IN A MAGIC STORE.
Anyway, I ended up taking lessons at the shop. They charged fifty
cents a lesson and, at the end of five lessons, I would receive a
certificate good for $2 worth of merchandise. Even at nine years
old, I was financial wizard enough to figure that was a pretty good
deal. Sometimes we had a guest teacher such as Bob McAllister,
Dick Oslund or Jerry Ornoff. My fellow students eventually went
on to bigger and better things like growing up and getting a job.
I must have missed the lesson where they taught that you were supposed
to outgrow this 'phase'.
That magic shop was a special place
and consumed all my free time for the next five years [1956, time to
start high school]. You would find me there every day after
school and all day on Saturday unless I had a show somewhere and
couldn't make it. I had worked my way behind the counter where I
would demonstrate for the customers. I sold a lot of stuff
because the adults figured that if a ten year old kid could do it, then
it must be easy.
The shop had a great list of
regulars. Retired troupers such as Art Eason and Karl Cartwright
who would fill the empty moments expounding on their world travels in
days gone by. I would listen with fascination because I knew that
someday it would be my turn to see the world.
OUT INTO THE COMMUNITY.
Meanwhile I let Norfolk be my training ground. [Chuck played in
theaters at age 14, and] I toured for the Norfolk Parks and Recreation
Department (once doing seventeen shows in two days, each at a different
location); played the Park Theatre as well as the Colley, Memrose,
Riverview and the Wells. Every Saturday night I emceed the
variety show at the Navy YMCA and Sunday afternoons found me as a
regular on WAVY-TV's 'Stars of the Future'.
THE LAUNCH TO NEW YORK:
Then came the letter. It was addressed to me in care of the magic
shop and I remember the night Earl handed it to me. It was from
New York; Hubert's Museum on 42nd Street. It offered an eight week
booking. I was off... [1958, sixteen yrs old, working
professionally. Chuck created his trademark show, "Wonderland of
Magic" at that time, somehow taking time off for high school with all
of us too.]
HUBERT'S DIME MUSEUM & FLEA CIRCUS
- The New York Times 22Nov2007: "Hubert’s Dime Museum and Flea
Circus, a celebrated basement phantasmagoria on 42nd Street in
Manhattan. In its heyday ... it was a haunt for the louche and
the lurid, and also for raconteurs of the offbeat like A. J. Liebling,
Tom Wolfe, Bob Dylan, Andy Kaufman and Lenny Bruce..." And yes,
there really was a flea circus act, fleas pulling objects, fleas
kicking balls.
MEETING
AL FLOSSO (1895-1976)
JIN: On his first day off from all this, Chuck Windley, 14, just up
from Norfolk, headed out to meet the famous man in town, in a horridly
dirty, cluttered "store":
"Sit down, kid, and rest your mind, "
said a little voice from nowhere "But do be careful. That was
once Houdini's chair. "
"I don't think he's still using it,"
I replied.
"You never know...you just never
know," stated the little man as he rounded the counter and sat across
from me.
"Mr. Flosso, my name is Windley and
I've been looking forward to meeting you for a long time," I began.
"Hell kid, you ain't been around for
a long time yet," he shot back; then, "How you like working
Hubert's? Charlie Lucas been treating you all right?"
"How did you know I was playing
Hubert's? I just opened there two days ago."
"Think you're my only customer? Some
of the guys were up here talking about you yesterday."
Thus began a conversation that
continued...in chapters...for over twenty years. I became part of
a group of magicians that could never be in New York without spending
at least one day with the little man. Al knew magic. He
knew magicians. He had been personal friends with Thurston and
Leon Mandrake and Houdini. He and Dunninger had grown up
together. When the phone would ring, it was usually Kuda Bux or
Cardini or any of a hundred others just calling to say hello...or ask a
favor...or seek advice.
The last time I saw Al was April
1976. We both knew it was the very last time we would see each
other. We waited until after the last customer had left and then
we quietly said goodbye. He died a month later. I
understand I'm not the only one that can tell this story.
-----
=o= -----
JIN: It was Earl Edwards' Edmar Magic
Shop on Granby Street where Chuck went as a child with Grandpa.
Chuck was later an apprentice of Bill Neff (1905-1967), who left Chuck
his shows when he died. Chuck was working out of New York in the
1970s and too active to have his own store until he returned to Norfolk
in 1982.
CHAPTER
2: ON THE ROAD IN THE 70s, STORES TOO, IN THE 80s
Launched in New York as a teenager in
the 1960s, Windley was everywhere by the 1970s.
He performed in circus shows (1979),
perhaps the first to do so:
http://www.circushistory.org/Publications/CircusReport19Feb1979.pdf
. . . and at a theme park summer
resort in the Adirondack Mountains in 1976,
(search "Got History - Enchanted
Forest Water Safari")
and in Florida festivals in 1979
-- Jacksonville/Atlantic Beach, Fort Meyers, a 30 minute magic
show of fire eating, people disappearing, ducks appearing, the
Guillotine trick and more, the festival flyer said. He was good
with kids, he played schools, the Greenbelt MD PTA sponsored one
(1975), Williamsburg's Mathew-Whaley School printed a formal program
for Windley's "Wonderland of Magic" (1972).
An article on Chuck's humor ran in Parade Magazine in 1978 (magically undisappeared by McLean HS fellow student Pam Johnstone Hitt).
Chuck ran his performance bookings
out of the Paramount Building, 43rd and Broadway in the Times Square
neighborhood of New York City -- he was showbiz savvy enough to get a
Paramount Building address in 1962, and kept it for 38 years.
STILL ON THE ROAD
IN 1982, BUT NOW WITH HIS OWN MAGIC STORE BACK HOME
Chuck's store, Magic and More, was
incorporated in Norfolk, 1982, and had two locations:
-- Oceanview Ave, Norfolk, VA 23503
tel 757/855-0864
Larger quarters came in 1985,
-- 797W 53rd St. Norfolk, VA 23508
magicwindley@verizon.net tel 757/440-7775.
-- 1992: a second store was added in
Virginia Beach
...my
heart is hurting...R.I.P my friend..you were a great magician and
boss..i loved working for you in VA Beach. You will be missed!
--Tina Mccallie Leone,
December 16, 2017
-- Jan 2000: both stores closed,
Windley wanted to just perform, but the many other
on-the-road magicians who used his supplies persuaded him to keep an
e-commerce
and warehouse operation going. Kathy Smith handled orders when
Chuck was
on the road.
-- 757/440-7775 remained the ordering
number for the online catalog at magicmore.com;
797 West 53rd Street, Norfolk, Virginia 23508 remained the mailing
address
(The e-commerce website ran until summer 2009.)
YOU MAY WANT THESE!
AP001 Devil's Handkerchief
This is a colorful handkerchief used
to vanish small objects such as a watch, deck of cards, etc.
These have double pockets and a penny
in each upper corner.
$12.00
AB003 Cigarette Catcher
With this gimmick and no skill, you
can reach in the air and produce a cigarette or a rose or crayon, etc.
$2.98
DE010 Ribbon & Candle - Fantasio
These are hard to get simply because
Fantasio doesn't like selling them. He still uses this routine in
his own act.
[Fantasio was Ricardo Roucau
(1936-2017), a prolific inventor whose appearing and disappearing props
like this one were sought-after by magicians everywhere.]
Effect:
Hold the end of a 1"x18" ribbon in
your left hand.
Right hand brings up other end and
drops it. You are suddenly holding a LIT candle.
Again bring the ribbon up in front of
the candle and let go.
The candle has completely vanished.
This is a very pretty routine and
pretty easy to perform.
Comes with everything needed and good
instructions.
$48.00
THE MONTHLY
NEWSLETTER "BACKSTAGE"
Chuck published a monthly newsletter
out of his "Magic and More" shop, called at first "Magic and more . . .
Backstage" and later called "Backstage: A Journal for Magicians".
From
his editorial, January 1982: "PLEASE . . . I already know that magic
shops aren't profitable! I know I won't make any money! I
wish people would stop telling me that. // Agreed that, if I wish to
open a business, I would be better off with a laundrymat or a saloon,
except that I don't really wish to clean up ..."
Monthly issues came out for ten
years, starting January 1982 when the Magic and More store was
incorporated, then becoming an 'occasional' and then, like many magic
rags, a 'whatever happened to?'. As the Website opened (1999) for
e-commerce and the
bricks-and-mortar storefront closed
(becoming the order-fulfillment warehouse), "Backstage: A Journal for
Magicians" came out regularly again. Frequent contributors were
Mike Bornstein, Bob McAllister, Billy McComb, many others.
"While
working as a bartender in a banquet room, I was lucky enough to see a
magician perform his show. I was next to the little stage that
was set up for the magician and after his performance we started
talking. I learned that this particular magician (Mr. Charles
Windley) also owned a magic shop (Magic & More - Norfolk, VA
757-855-0864).
And luckily for me, it was less than four miles from where I was living
at the time! The next day I walked in to Magic and More, purchased my
first trick (Scotch-n-Soda) and started down the path of becoming a
magician.
What magic meant
to me early in my magical life was more money as a bartender. What
magic means to me now is bringing a smile to someone's day. The
look of astonishment, excitement, and joy on the faces of people
watching ...is enough to keep me going for years and years."
--Ron
Ratcliff a.k.a. The Magi
By the end of the New York time, he was twice divorced and wondering
about giving up (he didn't). In the late 1980s Chuck was
performing mostly on cruise ships. By 2000, Chuck had
relinquished his Broadway presence, and was running his Norfolk store
only as the warehouse for an e-commerce operation from his website.
CHAPTER
3: BROADWAY, WILD TIMES
"I never really
had a career, it was more like an adventure."
@Magicwindley Twitterfeed,
10Sept2010
The Times Square neighborhood -- the
1970s New York City years -- were a wild time for Chuck, yet it is not
closed to us. Before Facebook and the social media revolution
killed them, there were blogs, and people poured their hearts out.
The "Ring 170 Blog" for Tuesday,
November 01, 2005
by "That Magic Guy"; here, a post by
Dennis Phillips
http://ring170.blogspot.com/2005/11/october-ring-report.html
Dennis Phillips, Dennis'
Deliberations...........
There have been a few special magical
characters that have affected my early life in magic: My boyhood friend
and mentor, Bob McAllister, Earl Edwards, Joseph and Georgi Smiley, Al
Cohen and Charles "Chuck" Windley.
Chuck Windley was originally from
Norfolk, Virginia and a part of the 1950s crowd that hung around Earl
Edwards' "Edmar" magic shop on Granby Street in downtown Norfolk.
I got to Norfolk in the early 50s because my father was a Navy man and
stationed at the massive Norfolk Navy base. As a boy of 10, my
interest in magic drew me to Edwards' shop. Chuck Windley was 8
years older than me so in those early years I watched him and the older
guys without being directly in their group. [Chuck's mother Betty
Windley Haddad, d.1984, had remarried Said "Paul" Haddad.] Chuck's step
dad was in the demolition business and business was brisk in the
Tidewater area tearing down the dilapidated military buildings from
World War Two. Later, Mr. Hadad [Said Haddad, 1916-2004] would
move to Northern Virginia and create ABC Demolition Corporation and
demolish most of the outdated buildings in Washington, D.C.
Chuck was anxious to leave Norfolk as
quickly as possible and make for the big time in New York City.
In the late 50s a short lived Western Theme village (Frontier City)
opened in Virginia Beach. Similar to Ocala's Six-Gun Territory,
these 50s theme villages were built to capitalize on the Western TV
series that were popular at that time on prime time TV. In many
ways they were an early version of the "theme park" that came to full
flower everywhere in the 1960s. Chuck was the "Medicine Man" and
had shows both in the "Palace Saloon" as well as a stand up act on the
Medicine Wagon in the town square. I remember a little of both
acts. Chuck used a Town House Head Chopper, 20th Century Silks,
Milk pitcher in paper cone and Hippity Hop Rabbits.
As soon as he could, Chuck made his
way to New York in the early 60s and here is where fact meets legend.
I do know that he worked in a Times
Square Amusement Hall as well as for Bill Neff and Chang [ca189- ca
1972; in his prime, Chang traveled with 14 tons of equipment, costumes,
stage settings]. Illusionist Roy Huston and Don Drake were some
of his big-time New York drinking buddies. Chuck has detailed
much of his version of his New York experiences in his former
periodical called "Back Stage" and some of it is posted on his "Magic
and More" website. He even included the story of his failed
suicide attempt. In the dark pre-dawn hours he jumped off the
second deck of the Staten Island Ferry and landed on a rather soft car
roof on the deck below. He said he was surprised and angry
because he thought he was going to his death into the New York
Harbor. The roof of the car was destroyed, Windley survived
uninjured. He indicated to me that Jack Daniels had pushed him.
Chuck migrated into carnival
work. He spent a short time with Professor Stu Miller on the
Clyde Beatty Circus sideshow. Eventually he gravitated back to
Washington, D.C. and started a school show circuit where he would
present a small illusion show as a fund-raiser. It was about this
time he met and married Shirley. Shirley was a very attractive
divorcee with two teenage daughters. She was about ten years
older than him but the relationship was ideal. Shirley was
mature, stable and had a creative and business sense and made an ideal
assistant for Chuck. They had a baby girl together, Saida [Saida Dawn Windley; goes by Dawn]..
Suburban Maryland became their home base.
At this time Chuck and I renewed our
old friendship. He and Shirley bought a house in Bowie, Maryland
in the massive Levitt development known as Belair. I lived a few
blocks away. At the time I was finishing up my degree in
Elementary Education and working in the broadcasting business in the
Washington Capital area. I became Chuck's illusion mechanic and
builder. While he and Shirley and the girls were out on tour, I
watched and maintained their house.
My first task was to rebuild and
remake much of his show. I worked on his Noma Blade Box illusion,
an effect he learned from his Bill Neff days. The plans to this
illusion can be found in the July '05 issue of "Genii". I gave
them to Paul Osborne and he put them in his article along with photos
of my Noma. I made Chuck a Fu Manchu version of the Nest of
Boxes. He wanted a "Head on the Sword" and I worked on that and a
photo of it can be seen in the book I co-wrote with Philip Morris "How
to Operate a Financially Successful Haunted House" [illustrations,
Charlie Lawing; 1st end 1980; 1997;
https://www.amazon.com/Operate-Financially-Successful-Haunted-House/dp/0911137114/]
One season Chuck and Shirley worked a
"Girl to Werewolf" illusion we built for a mud show circuit in the
Southeast states. It was like the Girl to Gorilla , using the
large plate glass reflective mirror and alternate dimmed lights. [The
mud show circuit is a traveling carnival company that features a large
variety of animals -- many exotic -- and animal acts, a tiger balancing
on a ball, elephants, so many animals that keeping them always makes
the field muddy.]
I graduated college in 1972 and ended
up as the production director at WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Virginia and a
short time later at WBTV in Charlotte, N.C. where I was a
producer-director-writer and Kid's Show host. Chuck was winding
down his school show route that he sold to Baltimore magician Ed
Sparrow.
Chuck and my path crossed again when
he went to work on a Phil Morris touring magic-illusion show. By
the mid 70s his marriage to Shirley was over and he was married to wife
#2. [JIN: I count three, Lisa, Shirley, this one.] That marriage
also ended in a few years and Chuck moved back to Norfolk,
Virginia. This was the town he always wanted to escape. He
tried to pick up the pieces of the old Edward's Magic shop and combine
it with a costume shop. The costume shop lasted a few years and
he closed it and focused on the magic business that he runs today
[2005; Magic and More].
Chuck had a staccato delivery and
rapid performing style with illusions.
The finest performance I saw him
perform was at a regional show for a Costumers convention in 1987 in
Charlotte. He came out with a wrinkled , ill-fitting and out of
date business suit and with just three effects brought the house down!
He did the Threaded Needles in the mouth, 6 Card repeat and a Napkin
Tear.
What made his act was not only his
clever and skillful handling of these classic effects but also his
attitude and sad-sack lines. He worked as a broken down,
abandoned character. He was a sort of "Willie Loman" (from Arthur
Miller's "Death of a Salesman")
One line stands out in my mind: "I
used to have a wife and a rabbit. My wife left me and took the
rabbit. God, I miss that rabbit!". I was never quite sure
if he was play-acting or if I was seeing the real Chuck Windley.
Maybe it was a combination of both.
--Dennis Phillips
Dennis
Phillips is the local Secretary for Ring #320, "The Blue Ridge
Magicians" of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. He
holds the "Merlin" title and the Lee Noble Award for
professionalism. Phillips has written cover stories for Magic
Magazine and co-authored the much demanded and reprinted book, "How to
Operate a Financially Successful Haunted House". His illusion
inventions have been seen in Las Vegas and on "America's Got
Talent" His own performances are known for high levels of
comedy and audience interaction.
==================================================
CHAPTER
4: CHECKING IN WITH AL FLOSSO ONE LAST TIME
http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=625179&forum=6
I've known Chuck Windley since he was
a wet nosed kid, whose nose just reached the top of the counter in the
old EdMar Magic shop [Earl Edwards, shop owner] in Norfolk.
Chuck, at 16, [JIN: 1956, age 14, Chuck says] went to New York, and,
lying about his age, got a job in Hubert's "Dime Museum". Of course, he met and got to be friends
with Al Flosso.
YEARS later, he stopped in to see
[Al's son] Jack, after Al [Flosso] had died. Jack said, "I'm
closing up. The building is going to be demolished, and, a new
skyscraper built. Is there anything that you would like for a
"souvenir" of Dad's shop?" Chuck responded, "YES! The toilet seat!"
Jack said, "Why would you want the toilet seat?" Chuck said, "Harry
HOUDINI [1874-1926] sat on that toilet seat!" It now hangs on the wall
in Chuck's apartment!
Ah! Show biz!
Dick Oslund, 3Oct2016
Al
Flosso (1895-1976) was Albert Levinson, who perfected the "Miser's
Dream" illusion of producing an endless sequence of coins out of thin
air and dropping them with a loud clang into a bucket. He won
Magician of the Year in 1973 after an appearance on The Ed Sullivan
Show. A New Yorker like Houdini, Flosso came up the hard way,
working the midway on Coney Island.
The
author of this recollection, Dick Oslund ("Keep it Simple, Make it
Fun"), drove forty to fifty thousand miles annually for years, bringing
his show to elementary and high schools, sometimes in small towns where
he played to a K-thru-12th-grade audience all at once.
=========================================================
CHAPTER
5. THE CHUCK WINDLEY TWITTER FEED
@Magicwindley
"Will gather my act today. For some
reason props are scattered everywhere. Both of them."
9Feb2012
Sold my illusion show Wonderland of Magic.
53 years was a long run. I'm glad it will continue.
21May2011
Moved house to Norfolk, tried to hang shelves ("I need 2 small anchor screws.
That means driving 7 miles to Home Depot, walking 100 yards from the parking lot
to the screw isle, then back"). What's the
lesson here?
"I don't have time to get
married. I'm going to just find a girl I don't like and buy her a
house." 14July2012
JIN:
Technology is beyond us. What comes up on the smartphone screen
is "magic" to most of us, and yet, did the smartphone play with our
expectations, amaze us in the end, smile when we did? Chuck Windley
said it simpler:
"Card tricks are to magic as pornography is to sex; all the moves are
there but there is no mystery." 27Feb2012
I just bought 8 dining room
chairs. Now I have to find 7 friends. 1Feb2011
My New Year's resolution is not to
make any resolutions. Damn, I broke it already. 1 Jan 2011
You spend Thursday giving thanks for
what you have, and then spend the next day buying more stuff. Go
figure. 22Nov2012
I need a haircut badly. Going in
today for an estimate. 7Jun2013
TV first and computers later have
completely destroyed people's attention span. 7Jan2011
The secret to success is
sincerity. Learn to fake that and you've got it made. 16Nov2009
Getting a hair cut this morning. What
the hell, I'll get them ALL cut! 17Jun2009
In doctor's office having my hearing
restored. I'll continue to say 'what?', however, so people won't talk
as much. 22Jul2009
R.I.P. from McLean High School Class of
1960
--jerry
J. I. Nelson
McLean, VA
CLASSMATE COMMENTS
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/charles-windley-obituary?pid=1000000187693506&view=guestbook
Chuck Windley was one
of us, McLean High School Class of 1960
"Damn it!! He was supposed to live
forever, and perhaps he will in our memories, but that is small
compensation for our loss. We met at McLean High School. He was truly
magical and a friend for 60 years. His magic began when illness
confined him to bed and his mother went to Mr. Edwards Magic Shop in
Norfolk and purchased a magic kit which led to his career in magic. His
magic came from Mr. Edwards, his comedy came from the heart. Many years
later he purchased the Magic Shop and continued Mr. Edwards Magic and
legacy. I had the privilege of knowing both of them. I will always have
the image of his walking down the street and turning into a drug store.
Thank you Chuck."
--Ford Bond
"I am mourning the death of CHUCK
WINDLEY, as are all who knew him. Chuck was the last good friend of my
youth, and one of the few true friends I have been fortunate to have in
my life.
Another friend of his wrote: "Charles
Windley has been described as the greatest magician you've never heard
of." While true, he was more than that. He was a student of the art, a
friend of every fledgling magician, and often to virtuoso
prestidigitators as well.
I'm still having problems imagining a world without Chuck Windley.
Chuck may have lost his life, but the world lost Chuck Windley. The
world got the worst of that deal. I almost expect him to reappear in a puff
of smoke, saying "Yes, I know how He did it!"
Goodbye, my friend of more than 60 years and my daughter's Godfather.
I will miss you as long as I live."
--Jack Seeley, December 17, 2017
Chuck very naturally projected a sophisticated image at McLean High
School, sophisticated but not aloof. He was a good guy, but you'd never
catch him in a pair of jeans. Along with magic, he was involved with
our drama department and was aware of what was going on in the
Washington, D.C. area entertainment scene. And, like a lot of us drama
kids at the time, he wouldn't miss the Jack Paar Show on TV. I admire
Chuck for following his individual bent toward magic and entertainment.
My condolences to his daughter and family.
Gary Ellison
March 01, 2018 | Davidson, NC
Three things impressed me about Chuck as a High School classmate. He
was always well and expensively dressed. Typically he wore a sport
coat, slacks, nice shoes and shirt and an ascot. He always had money;
and he was never at a loss for words. He was a mystery to me. A teen
making a living at "magic" - couldn't possibly be true. He was unique!
R.I.P.
Richard Bowers
March 01, 2018 | Corpus Christi, TX
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Post Script:
A "Broken
Wand" memorial service will be held at the 77th Annual "Abbott's
Get-Together," Mon-Thurs, 6-9 August 2018, in Colon, MI. The
memorial services are organized by:
IBM, The International Brotherhood of Magicians
13 Point West Blvd
St Charles, MO 63301-4431
tel 636/724-2400
Abbott's Get-Together in Colon, Michigan is anchored the preceding
week, Wed-Saturday, 1-4
August 2018, by a prominent
manufacturer/supplier of magic equipment, Abbott's Magic Company.
The show turns the town upside down, filling it with families in tents
and campers, with an international influx of invited magicians, run by
the Abbott's company, the Colon Lions Club, and Chamber of
Commerce. Registration is $220.
For information and to register for this annual event, contact
Abbott's Magic Company
124 St. Joseph Street,
Colon, MI 49040
tel 269/432-3235 or 800/926-2442
https://www.abbottmagic.com/main.sc
Cemetery. Colon, Michigan is
about four towns south of Battle Creek. The Get-Togethers are
known around the world, and Abbott's has been in Colon, MI so long,
that the small town's cemetery has become something of a national
Magicians' Graveyard.
Chuck's grave. Robert Baxt of the International Brotherhood of Magicians
has seen to it that Chuck will have a place in the magicians' section
of the town's Lakeside Cemetery. The Colon Magicians Graveyard
tombstone for Chuck will read, "Charles Windley, a wonderful magician,
a great character, and you picked the Three of Clubs."
Robert Baxt's wonderful tribute.
After such a rocky start, with no published death notice, no funeral
home obituary, I am thankful to Robert
Baxt for purchase of the gravesite and for publishing a fine
tribute for Chuck, beautifully illustrated, in the International Brotherhood of
Magicians magazine "The Linking Ring" for March 2018.
click any page to enlarge
click any page to enlarge
click any page to enlarge
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