While Art Jennings, the first IJA president, describes himself as an early Yuppie - with all the driven ambition and expansive reach the term has come to imply ­ no better contrast could be found than fellow IJA founder Roger Montandon.

 

Montandon is an amateur juggler and magician who has done little else than hold down one job all his life, work his land, and pursue his love of magic and juggling through a giant collection of books, props and photographs. His publication of "The Juggler's Bulletin" beginning in 1944 was a key to the IJA's development.

 

Full of news, tips, discussions, anecdotes, information, and history, the quality of "The Juggler's Bulletin" was never fully matched until publication of "Juggler's World" over 30 years after it ceased publication.

 

More important, the "Bulletin" gave voice to a wide scattering of jugglers who had no way previously of sharing their interests. Montandon and his "Bulletin" were the central point around which organized juggling first took shape.

 

This was a time when the number of "hobby jugglers," as they were called, was increasing, and they were looking for tips and advice. Professional jugglers were beginning to drop the secret guild attitude toward their craft and share their knowledge.

 

The "Juggler's Bulletin" provided the first community of juggling. Each issue represented the first juggler's conventions, and each issue brought closer, through discussions and then plans, the founding of the International Juggler's Association.

Montandon lives on Snake Creek in Bixby, Okla.,  just south of Tulsa, on 40 acres of what can generously be called good scrub land. The Snake periodically floods, costing him livestock, flooring, and damage to his extensive juggling and magic library. 

 

He has a soft-spoken dignity, a flashing child's sense of humor, and friendly eyes. He meets his visitors in a clown print shirt and escorts them around his land: a pecan orchard where geese and goats graze, where he raised burrows until they were taken down with disease. A dachshund runs by his side and the baby goat comes to his call for the bottle. He follows rather than leads his guests, watching through their eyes, speaking only to direct questions, and offering no-nonsense small talk.

 

He lets his visitors thumb through shelf upon shelf of his library, and paw through his collection of priceless Van Wyck and Lind props. He brings out several boxes of photographs and souvenirs. He has an obvious pride in all this, but he keeps it in his pocket and lets others enjoy.

 

Montandon first took up magic in childhood and, in 1933 at the age of 15, added juggling to his repertoire in order to win a part in a school variety show. Where Art Jennings learned by analyzing other jugglers, Montandon availed himself of written resource materials. He sent for Rupert Ingalese's book and learned enough during the summer to qualify for the show in the fall.

 

His inspiration to juggle came from W.C. Fields in "The Old Fashioned Way," which he saw a half-dozen times. (One of his prized possessions is a signed letter from Fields dated 1934. In the letter, Fields, characteristically business-like but encouraging, calls juggling "a bunch of fun.")

 

He gave his first paid show on Nov. 7, 1933, and still has the first dollar bill he made from it. His parents, although not thrilled, were supportive enough to present him with a book on magic which cost over $12 and was therefore, at the height of the Depression, great support indeed.

 

He did a little semi-professional juggling in college, sometimes combining his act with magic. He joined an entertainment group that toured Oklahoma.  In 1941, he graduated from Oklahoma A&M as an electrical engineer, and went to work for the Wait Manufacturing Company, where he stayed until retirement.

 

The association with the Wait company was a perfect one. Logan Wait, 80 years old last June, was a prominent local magician Montandon met in 1933. Montandon became his assistant and did a juggling act after Wait's magic show. Wait was a great supporter of magic and juggling - Lottie Brunn and Michael Chirrick were among his house guests - and Montandon was able to pursue his interest in both with Wait's encouragement.  Their association was close throughout the years and they collaborated on a magic booklet, "Not Primogenial. "

 

It was on a fortuitous trip East in 1944 to promote "Whoa Boy," a Wait company rocking horse, that Montandon drummed up support for his "Bulletin" and for an organization of jugglers.

 

Montandon actually established his own Montandon Magic Company in the Wait building. He sold magic and novelty items and manufactured sorely-needed juggling equipment such as practice clubs and some beautifully weighted nickel-finish spinning plates. And it was in an office over one of the Wait plants that Montandon began publishing "The Juggler's Bulletin."