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People
Off the Clock
Magic at
Trenton
When Ken Wade waves his
wand, fun is in the cards
Ken Wade wasn’t born a
wizard. He didn’t spend
his youth shooting fireballs
out of his fingers
or levitating people. He
didn’t attend Hogwarts. But he
learned how to make a coin disappear
after just two weeks of practice.
Since he started dabbling in magic
five years ago, Wade has learned some
more impressive tricks that not only
amaze people but also make them
think. At a UAW-DaimlerChrysler PQI
Conference earlier this year, Wade
asked participants to drop different
colored silks into a bag — and he
pulled out a 33-foot rainbow-colored
streamer. “It tied in the theme that we
all work together, and no one person is
more important than the other,” says
Wade, 28, a member of UAW Local
372 who works in video communications
at Trenton Engine.
A theater lover who picked up
prestidigitation from masters like Las
Vegas hero Lance Burton and magic
Ken Wade
book author John Luka, Wade had
an interest in the subject as a kid. But
he didn’t get into it until a UAW
gospel festival introduced him to
“gospel magic,” which uses illusions
as metaphors for religious ideas, like
tying ropes together to symbolize a
spiritual connection.
“It started off with a simple trick,
then buying a video,” Wade recalls.
“And it just grew.” Still, Wade’s wand
has kept its amateur status. “As far as
major illusions — like cutting a lady in
half — I don’t have any,” he says.
Instead, his most-often applied
genre is “close-up,” a sleight-of-hand
illusion that usually involves cards or
coins. (Like all good magicians, he
won’t give away his secrets.) In one
popular illusion, he asks someone in
the audience to pick a card, which he
immediately “changes” from blue to
red, and from ace of spades to king
of clubs.
Wade, a father of three, enjoys
giving performances at kids’ parties,
schools and churches. He says that the
presentation, not the trick itself, is the
hardest part of the act. “It’s the opportunity
not so much to fool people or
make them feel stupid, but to entertain
them and make them say, ‘Wow,
that was cool,’” says Wade, who has
worked at Trenton Engine since 1996.
“It’s just the sheer, ‘Man! How’d he
do that?’” ■ — Steve Knopper
Editor’s Note: Ken Wade is taking an
educational leave-of-absence to enter a
pastoral studies program at Arlington
Baptist College in Arlington, Texas.
He plans to use magic in his ministry.
JOHN SOBCZAK/LORIEN STUDIOS
22 www.uawdcx.com