BROKEN WAND :: TERRY SEABROOKE

By Scott Wells:

The laughter has died. It is a sad day when a funny man passes. And so it is that we must pause to remember a man who has brought smiles to the faces of everyone from us common men to royalty all over the world. Terry Seabrooke passed early this morning, January 11, 2011 after his long bout with cancer. The picture here is of Terry and his wife, Hilda that I took when I visited their home in Watford in March 2000. The other picture below was taken in front of Terry’s home on Beechcroft Road as he welcomed us when we drove up his drive which was ironically just off of Vernon Street.

 

As the title of his book implied, he has entertained “Around the World with a Baking Tin”. He has performed in practically every venue from cruise ships and the Palladium to working men’s halls and church basements. All the while, he has honed his craft and comedic timing to a fine art. He cheered the troops and those in hospitals and he always said he didn’t like entertaining children. But in fact I know that he loved kids. He once told me that he put a tack in a book so when he sent a child back to his seat, he swatted the youngster on the backside causing him to jump a little. I think this delighted Terry more than the audience. Certainly more than the child who was on the receiving end. When he first stayed with us in Midland, TX, and having heard these stories, my wife, Kathy, feared that he may not like our children. That was not the case and he couldn’t have been more attentive and caring to our boys.

And speaking of staying with us as a house guest, Terry visited us on many occasions until we finally stopped inviting him. You see, every time Terry stayed with us, we moved within the next six months. But let me start at the beginning.

 

We first met Terry when Kathy and I attended an Atlanta Harvest of Magic in the early 1980s. I wanted to see Terry perform plus Slydini was on the bill along with Joe DeLion and some others whom I had never seen perform. One evening we all went to the Varsity (great hamburgers, BTW) and we all squeezed into a very small car so we got to know each other rather…well, intimately. In 1985 Terry performed a New Year’s Eve show along with funnyman Pat Hazell in Lubbock, TX. Pat was a long time friend whom I had known since his early days in Omaha, NE. I drove from Midland to Lubbock on New Year’s Day to pick up both Pat and Terry who were our house guests for the next few days. We joked about Pat losing his check for his New Year’s performance and being in a “dither” to find it. It wasn’t until he arrived back in Omaha that he located the check in his luggage. On the drive from Lubbock, Terry was fascinated by the many cotton fields along the way so we stopped and he got out to pick some cotton. Apparently he had never seen it growing before then. It was during Terry’s first visit that we learned never to be short of a bottle or two of Scotch if we expected to have Terry as a house guest. I have embedded one of my favorite photos of Terry taken in Midland while he “slept” in the easy chair after having a bit of Scotch and too many card tricks (Terry was not a close-up kinda guy).

 

We lived in Midland for about five years and it appeared that we were going to be there for a while longer. So, just after we had wallpapered the house, I was transferred to Omaha…within six months of Terry’s visit. Omaha was great fun and coincidently my move coincided with Pat Hazell’s move to L.A. so I replaced him as house magician at a local restaurant. About 18 months later in 1987, I performed with Terry at the “Magic in the Midlands” convention in nearby Lincoln, NE. Once again Terry was a house guest during the convention. And once again, I was transferred from Omaha, this time to Houston.

 

Terry was a fairly regular performer at Houston’s Magic Island and on one of his last visits, he darkened our doors once again and slept in our home. Within the next three months we moved to Dallas. While there, Terry was a performer at the T.A.O.M. in Ft. Worth. That meant that he would naturally stay with us again. And naturally we moved within the next few months this time back to Houston. It was with this move that Terry promised not to stay with us again.

 

And so we have resided in Houston for the past 13 years. During that time we have visited Terry in his home in Watford but we did not spend the night. So he never moved. On a related note, at one point we adopted an alley cat that we named Seabrooke because he would sleep anywhere, eat anything and caroused with the worst lot. He wrote about this along with other stories of our wanderings together in his regular column he published in the M.U.M. magazine.

 

I have several Seabrooke stories and many more fond memories which I will treasure including the time we were his dinner guests at the Academy of Magical Arts annual awards banquet. That was the year that David Copperfield used his Burnt Bank Note routine in his show without first getting Terry approval. There is an interesting story behind that one that I’ll be glad to share with you personally with a glass a Scotch.

 

I have posted a website with some of my photos I took of Terry at www.ScottWells.com/Seabrooke.htm Pleas take a moment to see some old shots that might bring back some of your own memories. Kathy and I will sorely miss Terry but there are hundreds of thousands of people who will remember the fun, the laughter and the joy he brought to their lives and to the world. And all with nothing more than a baking tin. Aloha, my dear friend.

 

Sincerely,

Scott Wells