I met Bob Stencel when I was 13 or 14 at one of the magic club meetings in Lansing, where I grew up. Stencel was from the Detroit area. He was a different kind of guy, but he was very good. I remember to this day the first things he did for me. What he showed me, his touches on things that I never discussed with him again. That would have been more than 45 years ago. I used to see him from time to time, when he’d visit the magic shop I worked in or at Abbott’s Get Together, etc. He always showed me the most amazing things, things no one else did.
After I moved to Detroit in my mid-20s, I saw more of Bob and spent a lot of time with him. On one occasion I went to his place, and he started telling me about Ed Marlo’s deck switch, and he showed it to me. I said, “Oh, that’s very interesting.” I can’t now remember what he showed me, but it was good; Stencel didn’t fool around with things that weren’t good. I asked Bob, “Marlo showed that to you?” And he said, “Well, yeah, I had a dream, and Marlo came to me in the dream, and showed me this deck switch, and he held my hands and made sure that I got it exactly right. So, this is the ‘Marlo’ deck switch.” And of course, it was completely Stencel’s, but he created it in a dream, which I thought was great, and he never would call it anything but the Marlo deck switch.
—William Kalush