WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 2004
ENTERTAINMENT
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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27
Disability doesn't slow down magician
The Associated Press
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Were it the time of dungeons and dragons, Bob Klamm might be a master wizard.
More than a half century ago, Klamm, now 73, became acquainted with the art of illusion. An enduring relationship ensued.
From the boyhood streets of Kansas City, Kan., to the halls of Northwestern University and the classroom stage at Van Horn High School, magic knitted itself into Klamm's life, like a ribbon through a plait.
A few months ago, while a protege rehearsed for a show, Klamm sat attentively in the audience at the Fairmount Community Center in Independence, Mo.
Klamm's wife whispered in his ear, describing the illusions that 13-year-old Trevon Chambliss had conjured up on stage.
He heard bursts of applause. But he never saw the rainbow of colorful scarves the boy pulled — one after another — from an ordinary black box.
He doesn't see much of anything these days. Yet Klamm, always the teacher, offered advice.
"You never want to turn your back to
"Nobody had ever told me a blind person wasn't supposed to be able to do magic, so I just did it."
Bob Klamm Magician
the audience," Klamm shouted in Trevon's direction. "They might shoot."
Klamm was a visually challenged and awkward child, rarely picked to play sports. But magic made him popular. He taught himself the art when he was several years younger than Trevon.
By junior high, he was dazzling civic groups, church congregations and schoolchildren. His mastery of theatrics hid his biggest stage secret: He barely could see.
Klamm was born with congenital optic atrophy, which left him legally blind as a boy and nearly completely blind now.
"Nobody had ever told me a blind person wasn't supposed to be able to do magic, so I just did it."
He was about high school age before friends, family or teachers knew the extent of his vision problems.
"People just wrote it off by saying I was
clumsy," he said. But with magic, Klamm could do things that other people could not. "It gave me strength."
He did nearly everything he dreamed. After earning his undergraduate degree in broadcasting from Northwestern University he wrote commercials for radio and television. When he didn't find fame over the airwaves, Klamm returned to school for a master's degree in secondary education from the University of Kansas.
He became a drama teacher. For 20 years he ran the theater department at Van Horn High School in Independence. Jim Abel, who worked on stage crews at Van Horn's shows between 1961 and 1965, recently sent an e-mail to Klamm to thank him for the experience of being his student.
Although he never thought much about it at the time, Abel remembers that whenever Klamm read, he held the paper right up against his nose.
As his sight worsened, Klamm peered through field binoculars while coaching the student actors during rehearsals. When even binoculars weren't enough, Klamm retired and focused on the magic shop he had opened in 1976.
From the basement of their Independence home, Klamm and his
wife, Bernice, operate the shop — a magic lover's sanctuary.
More than a decade ago, Klamm founded Kansas City's Society of Young Magicians. For many years he worked one-on-one with young wannabe performers.
Klamm had given up public performances about eight years ago, when he could see only shadows and couldn't tell the boys from the girls at birthday party shows.
Klamm reserved his performances for customers in his shop. That is how he met Trevon, a Kansas City youth who, like the young Klamm, had been in pursuit of notoriety.
And, working with the Society of Young Magicians, Klamm has seen magic open a new world for children.
Take Trevon, for example.
He's a bit shy, but in nine months has become so comfortable in the limelight that he hams it up with magic every chance he gets, said his mom, Dorothy Chambliss.
It has become clear, Klamm said, that performing as the blind magician can show youngsters that they can do things even if they have some physical or emotional challenge.
And that is the true magic of his career.