While many of you knew her as Ann, Anna, or Annie, some people knew her only as Mrs. Wizard, a mysterious voice on the phone.  Here is the story.

Back in the mid 70s, a friend of the family came to our house in Heritage Park.  He was into card tricks and introduced us all to his "Mr. Wizard" trick.  Mom loved this trick and we altered it to make it all about "Mrs. Wizard."

It worked like this. I would be with friends who I wanted to trick and you ask one person to "pick a card, any card" from a deck.  Unlike other traditional pick-a-card tricks, with this one the person picking must show the card to everyone, including me.

Then I would weave some story about this woman magician who was fantastic at mental telepathy.  So great in fact that she can read your mind from hundreds or thousands of miles away over the phone.

At that point, I would call mom aka Mrs. Wizard then I would hand the phone to our somewhat confused victim.  Mrs. Wizard would have some mysterious voice and say something like "I see the card is black, it looks like a spade, no a club, it has a gentlemen on the card."  She would go on narrowing in on the card's description then she would scream "It is the Jack of Clubs!" or whatever the correct card was.  Then she would launch into gales of laughter and would hang up abruptly.  Leaving the person holding the phone speechless.

We would call back several times with new cards and she would continue to taunt the caller about the cards, make disparaging remarks about the the victim, as well as tease them about how the trick wasn't done and how the trick was really done (using mental telepathy, of course).  Each time she would get the card right, it would make the caller more frustrated.

Noone ever could figure out how we did the trick and I won't tell now. However, I will say that it required a little setup ahead of time.  I would have to call mom 5 minutes before attempting the trick just to say "We will be calling Mrs. Wizard in a few minutes, can you take the call."  She was always ready to torture the next subject.

And it wasn't just me who would call her, it was the whole family. This trick went on for literally over 30 years.   We had to stop doing it when cell phones became popular.  At that point, it was easier to text someone the card or have a confederate in the room, who could hear the card being announced then stepped out of the room to take the Wizard call.  So the trick lost its luster.

But for over 30 years, mom was always happy to play the role of Mrs. Wizard and to guess cards the old fashioned way...using mental telepathy.