About The Author
It is a truism that there are none so sad as those who cannot laugh at themselves. Bob Klamm has been laughing at himself for the last 75 years.
No one knew he was nearly blind-not even himself-until he was eight years old. He just kept on making jokes about his bumbling ways. He tells the whole story in his humorous and inspirational memoir, Fly Like a Bumblebee. He has recently written a stage play version of this prize-winning memoir.
R. W. (Bob) Klamm grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, where he was born nearly blind. In second grade, they gave him eyeglasses thick as coke bottle bottoms-so heavy that Bob quips, "It was like the bottles were still attached."
In junior high school, he did his first big magic show for a student body of 500. At last! He was no longer an outcast. He was hooked on magic, and has been performing ever since.
The State Services for the Blind sent him to Northwestern University, where he graduated with honors, and a Bachelor's degree in drama, radio and TV.
At the age of 22 he returned to Kansas City, where he had the good fortune to stumble into what was probably the most creative advertising agency in the nation.
There, he pioneered the comedy radio commercial. It was in the early 50's, years before Garrison Keeler and the Smothers Brothers latched onto the idea. Some of Bob's original comedy radio writings are still available, now digitally enhanced and preserved on CD. The CD and his books are available on his web site.
Wanting to do more than just sell product, Bob went back to school for a Master's degree in Education, so that he could teach speech and drama in secondary schools. After earning his degree, he settled in for a twenty-year off-off-Broadway run of producing the best of professionally written Broadway comedies and dramas, as well as Shakespeare. It was at Van Horn High School, part of the Kansas City Missouri school system, located in Independence, Missouri. During this time he developed the techniques found in Get More Laughs from Your Laughs.
Bob is a master teacher, having shepherded numerous college students through their practice teaching. He teaches a comedy class for the University of Missouri at Kansas City in their Continuing Education division.
Operating Kansas City's oldest magic shop, Bob Klamm also sells his own magical inventions and other magic props to professional magicians and hobbyists, worldwide, on his web site at www.klamm-magic.com. Bob started a Kansas City assembly of the national Society of Young Magicians, and produced their annual magic show for 17 years. The Greater Kansas City Assembly #38 of the International Society of American Magicians bears his name.
Drawing on his experienced with children and youth of all ages, he has written Out-Fox The Kids for Fun And Profit. These are little "Pearls from the Klamm," sparkling little stories, fables, fractured fairy tales and sometimes humorous parables-little gems of wisdom designed to help your little gems of joy.
Bob and his wife, Berniece, live in Independence, Missouri, with a magic shop in the basement. They have two grown sons and four granddaughters.
For a time, there eldest, Dale, was Head Carpenter for Kansas City's theater League; and at the Kansas City Starlight Theater, a giant outdoor theater complex, where he was in charge of all that goes on back stage. Scott is a Chemical engineer, and does classified environmental studies for Midwest Research Institute. He plays a wide variety of musical instruments; and a major love of his is presenting folk music programs for local schools.