Walter Wilson

Walter Wilson
Born	Walter Wilson February 9 1926 Detroit
Died	November 23 2002 (age 76) Detroit

Walter "Wally" Wilson (1926-2002) was a magician and police officer from Detroit. Living in the city all his life, Wilson had long-time friendships with many well-known magicians around the area, including Milt Kort, Bob Longe, Ron Bauer, Karrell Fox, Bob Stencel, and many others.

Biography

Wally served in World War II in the Philippines from 1944 until 1946, and met another young soldier who happened to be interested in magic, named Jay Marshall.

He was a Detroit city police officer for 39 years before retiring from the force. In the sixties, when the police department was doing several safety programs with schools, Wilson incorporated magic into his presentation to get big results with the kids. He was a pioneer of this type of "safety magic" for children, and performed as the "Magic Police Officer."

Wally and his close friend Milt Kort took the reigns of The Tel-Twelve Mystics, a magic group named after the local Tel-Twelve Mall. They had no officers, no business meetings, and no dues--just magic! Later Wilson and Kort's good friend Clare Cummings started a similar club called the Clare Cummings Roundtable, which eventually became the Monday Mystics.

When Wally passed away in 2002, John Osborne wrote a piece about him in The Linking Ring:

Although Wally was well-known and much respected among his fellow magicians, it was not widely known how helpful he was to many aspiring magicians, often helping them financially when they were down on their luck as well as in a host of other ways. I mentioned his name to a magician at the Get Together in Colon. He told me his story. In his youth he had gotten into some serious trouble with the law. Wally found him a job and literally kept him out of jail. That was just one of many stories about this kind man.

Affiliations

• I.B.M. Ring 22 Detroit (secretary)
• I.B.M. Ring 116 Windsor Magic Circle
• I.B.M. Ring 253 Waterford, MI
• Order of Merlin - Excalibur (50 years continuous membership)

Publications

Wilson wrote columns on safety magic and jokes for The New Tops. He also collaborated with friends Milt Kort and Ron Bauer on The O-Korto Box Routine, published in J. B. Bobo's New Modern Coin Magic in 1966.

Bob Longe Books

Wilson has contributed numerous tricks to books written by his long-time friend, fellow Detroit-native and professional author Bob Longe. In fact, Longe's 1996 World's Greatest Card Tricks was dedicated to "my good friend Wally Wilson."

Easy Card Tricks (1995)

• The Fooler (p. 16)
• Cutting the Aces (pp. 70-73)

Great Card Tricks (1995)

• Am I Blue (pp. 39-41)
• Ten Tells (pp. 83-84)

World's Greatest Card Tricks (1996)

• Sixes and Nines (pp. 35-39)
• Wally's Wily Ace Trick (pp. 60-66)
• The Black Card (pp. 102-103)

Mystifying Card Tricks (1997)

• The Name Doesn't Matter (pp. 82-85)
• The Force is With You (pp. 93-94)
• Card Reading (pp. 117-118)

Card Tricks Galore (1999)

• Double Dealing (pp. 44-48)
• Hickory-Dickory-Dock (with Milt Kort, pp. 89-92)
• My Time is Your Time (pp. 92-94)

Clever Card Tricks For the Hopelessly Clumsy (2001)

• Meet Madam Flaboda (pp. 62-66)
• You Need All 52 (pp. 70-73)
• Crime Does Not Pay (pp. 82-84)
• The Ten Trick (pp. 87-90)
• It's That Time (pp. 113-114)

Classic Card Games & Tricks (2002)

• The Force is With You (pp. 223-225)
• Double Dealing (pp. 271-276)

References

• "Walter Wally Wilson," John Osborne, The Linking Ring, Vol. 83 No. 1, January 2003, p. 134.
• http://www.ancientfaces.com/person/walter-m-wilson/51540099