For those of you who have not yet heard, we lost a legend in the last couple of weeks. This man was not one of those legends that we had heard about. This man was a man that we had known for several years, and had been fortunate enough to spend several hours a year with him every year at the Vent Haven ConVENTion. We will miss Bill DeMar greatly every time we look around the room in Kentucky and don’t see him in his chair.
Back years ago one late night (about 1:00 A.M.) we were having coffee with Gary and Teddi Owen at Chaucers at the Drawbridge Inn during ConVENTion. While we were talking, Gary spotted a white headed older gentleman and suggested that we move over and sit with him. Gary introduced us to Mr. Bill DeMar and told us at the time that Bill was one of the greatest manipulators in the business.
As it turned out, this was truly an understatement. Bill had a longstanding reputation as a manipulator so good that he could even pull off an act with the puppet never saying a word. Well known for his act with Feldon the Frog, Bill would do all the speaking and Feldon would do nothing but move and still bring the house down.
Over the next several years we got to look forward to our annual time with this old gentleman. We watched him as he would spend time with young ventriloquists, helping them to learn the tricks of the trade and just being a general encouragement to them as they began to practice the craft.
Bill always had good uplifting words for those in the industry. Always a ready smile, with a few one-liners Bill will leave a hole in our hearts that will be very hard to fill.
Take a few minutes and watch Bill in action.
Thats all for this week. We will see you down the road Uncle Bill.
Steve and JET