KEEPING THE LEGACY ALIVE
"Once a year, as close to the April Fool’s eve anniversary of Eddie Fechter’s death as they can get, four professional magicians from two generations come together in Mount Calvary Cemetery." begins an article from the Buffalo News which remembers magician Eddie Fechter, former owner of the Forks Hotel and the founder of the exclusive FFFF gathering.
“You learned how to perform . . . That’s the real secret of magic,” said Harrison Carroll, one of the older magicians, of the craft that became his profession at the Forks.
The Cheektowaga place, with the giant pa-pier mache rabbit pulling a magician out of a hat in the front, was a bar and a kind of magicians’ clubhouse and training ground. Most traces of its existence have vanished.
But the men who stood talking by the grave’s clumps of artificial flowers said they owe a debt to the world-class sleight of hand artist, who showed Carroll and others how to make a full-time living enchanting people with comedy and illusions.
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