Courtesy photo A photo that appears on the cover of Dr. Dwight F. Damon's newest book shows him waving a large American flag during a recent stage show. (Courtesy photo)

Three days before Christmas in 1947, leaders of Nashua’s Universalist Church – this was before the parish merged with the Unitarians to form the Unitarian Universalist Church – took a chance and invited a local teenager they’d heard was a pretty good magician to do a show at the church’s annual family Christmas party.

About a month later, the same youthful magician was eagerly recruited by members of the Bay State Woman’s Club of South Ashburnham, Massachusetts, to entertain members and their guests at their monthly meeting.

Then, on St. Patrick’s Day 1949, the Nashua chapter of the Association of Universalist Women, probably remembering how much everyone enjoyed that Christmas 1947 show he put on, coaxed him back to the church for a repeat performance.

This newspaper’s predecessor-in-name, the Nashua Telegraph, had begun running short stories we call “briefs” about what by all accounts was to the meteoric rise of this young man’s popularity as a top-notch magician, illusionist, comedian, all-around performer not only locally and statewide, but across New England as well.

Today, the former kid whose “many clever tricks of magic, mental telepathy, mind-reading (and) mysterious and fascinating tricks delighted both old and young,” whose “feats of magic, illusions and escapes … carried out in a comedy vein were well-received,” and whose programs of “magical mystery” were so “enthusiastically received,” is inching up on his 89th birthday – and still running the family entertainment business his grandfather founded a century ago this year.

Telegraph file photo This 1989 photo taken at Dwight Damon's Merrimack office shows him speaking with a client about hypnotism, of which he has been a practitioner for many years.

He’s Dr. Dwight F. Damon, a long-retired chiropractor known worldwide as the longtime president of the National Guild of Hypnotists, which he resurrected decades ago after one of its founders suddenly vanished and others faded away, shrinking the once-robust membership list to almost nothing.

But Damon is probably most recognizable to baby boomers as the white-faced, oversize bow tie-wearing “Ring-A-Ding,” the hyperactive, beloved clown who back in the 1960s and 70s hosted a weekly show with a live audience of kids on a then-fledgling WMUR-TV channel 9 – but who also traveled near and far with his truck full of clown things to entertain kids of all ages.

A Nashua native, Damon grew up on Raymond Street with his two older brothers, Earl and Lane Damon. Their father, Harold Damon, was a well-known real estate salesman whose prominent downtown Nashua office doubled as the headquarters for Damon Associates, the entertainment agency Edgar Damon, Dwight Damon’s grandfather, founded in 1921.

The family moved to Merrimack in the late 1940s, when Damon’s parents bought the former Thornton Inn and renamed it Lane Manor, after their middle son, who was trained in hotel management.

Now, after having written nine books, beginning with “Power Hypnosis” (1956) and “TV’s Original Balloonatic” (1958) up through 2015’s “Hypnotismul O Profesie,” a Romanian translation of 2011’s “Hypnotic Recollections,” Damon has just released “The Granite State Showman: Reminiscences of Dr. Dwight F. Damon,” his 10th and (according to him) final book that takes the reader on a fun, often fascinating, sometimes moving, but always entertaining, journey of a man who’s been to a lot of places and done a lot of things.

Courtesy photo A collage of news stories, photos and advertisements is on the back cover of Dr. Dwight F. Damon's latest book.

See accompanying information on the book and how to purchase a copy.

So many pursuits has the longtime Merrimack resident embarked upon in his eight-plus decades that it’s difficult to sort them into any kind of order, which is fine because even as Damon admits, his attempts to break the book down “into individual facets” of his business and personal life “isn’t easy.

“My life was rather unconventional, and so is this book,” he wrote at the outset.

Often addressed as “Doc Damon” – a leftover from his roughly 20 years as a chiropractor – Damon had perhaps a dozen stage personas, ranging from the straightforward “Dwight the Magician” and “The Magical Damons,” the latter with his late wife Lois, to “The Great Damon” and “TV’s Original Balloonatic,” which spotlighted one of his many talents – balloon sculpting, the art of twisting so-called “modelling” balloons into the shape of animals.

Not wanting to spoil the fun you’ll have reading “The Granite State Showman,” I’ll stay away from letting any cats out of the proverbial bag.

Dean Shalhoup

Longtime reporter, columnist and photographer, is back doing what he does best ñ chronicling the people and history of Nashua. Reaching 40 years with The Telegraph in September, Deanís insights have a large, appreciative following.

But I will mention that Damon and I share the same alma mater – Mt. Pleasant Elementary School – and went to the same junior high, although in his day it was Nashua Junior High School, and in my era it was Spring Street Junior High.

And I also learned that we shared the same junior high guidance counselor – Celia Winn – albeit more than 20 years apart.

“Miss Winn” is among many local folks with recognizable names, both deceased and living, who earned mention in Damon’s book.

It seems that Miss Winn assigned one of her groups of students, of which Damon was one, to write a report “on what we wanted to be as adults,” he wrote.

Having “already decided by then that I wanted to be a magician/showman,” it seemed to Damon this was one assignment that would be a breeze.

Sometime later, the students took turns meeting with Miss Winn to go over their reports.

When Damon’s turn came, he recalls in the book, “Miss Winn … told me quite decisively that being a magician/showman was not practical at all … that it would be better (for me) to aspire to learn something I could do for a living instead of ‘playing with tricks,'” he wrote.

“Oh, well,” Damon added. “she hadn’t been the only one who thought that I wouldn’t make it as a magician/showman. But, little did they know.”

Indeed, even one of the most respected guidance counselors of her generation could be wrong once in a great while.

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