CHARLES E. WINDLEY
(1942 - 16 Dec 2017)

Magicians are a natural fraternity, a society of secrets,
initiation is required. Within that fraternity,
Chuck Windley was legendary.

written by: J. I. Nelson

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

Chuck Windley circus act

. . . 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.)

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

Knowing the Secret of a Magic Trick Detroys Your Joy in It

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


huckWindley-Twitter-BeingDeadOrStupidIsAProblemOnly4Others-500



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.



Charles Windley Trbute by Robert Baxt, pg 1
click any page to enlarge

Charles Windley Trbute by Robert Baxt, pg 2
click any page to enlarge


Charles Windley Trbute by Robert Baxt, pg 3
click any page to enlarge

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