Goodbye, Casper the Camel

This doesn’t per­tain to green liv­ing, per se, but I wanted to pay trib­ute to a friend of mine who recently passed away. He was a local Delaware sup­porter that many of the down­town mer­chants prob­a­bly knew or at least would recognize.

His name was Sky Lucey and if you grew up in cen­tral Ohio and are over 50, you may remem­ber him as Casper the Camel on the after-school local TV show “Casper’s Capers.” The show, which he and friend Chuck Nuzum cre­ated, aired on WTVN-TV (Chan­nel 6) for 10 years, until 1963. Sky also hosted a jazz show on WOSU-TV (Chan­nel 34) after that, in addi­tion to var­i­ous other jobs, includ­ing man­ag­ing the Engine House No. 5 restau­rant in Ger­man Village.

I met Sky, then 76, about four years ago when I worked at the B. Cause Bou­tique in down­town Delaware. With his sparkling per­son­al­ity, and our com­mon inter­est in black and white pho­tog­ra­phy and travel, we became fast friends. Sky lived alone and didn’t have fam­ily in Delaware, so we’d meet for cof­fee and tea and he’d regale me with sto­ries from his past. He had a zest for life and enjoyed being on the go. He’d take the DATA bus all over the county with down­town being his favorite spot to spend time — he was a fre­quent fix­ture at Bee­hive Books, Chel­ley Belly and 1808.

Sky loved peo­ple. His years in “show busi­ness” and in the­ater at OSU were obvi­ous as he was some­times the­atri­cal and witty. He had the gift of chat­ting and seemed to enjoy Delaware and all it had to offer.

Over the years, I came to under­stand that he was famil­iar with the often bit­ter taste of regret in some areas of his life. I learned from that. Life is too short. But, despite his cir­cum­stances (he suf­fered from a rare and some­times painful skin dis­ease and thanks local physi­cian Dr. Storer for sav­ing his life), he always remained pos­i­tive and upbeat; hope­ful and, as his son Brian described him in his obit­u­ary, “full of wonder.”

Sky’s last call to me in early Jan­u­ary was about his son, who is a six-time Grammy nom­i­nee for mas­ter­ing engi­neer, includ­ing his work with The Black Keys. His stu­dio, Magic Gar­den Mas­ter­ing, is in Colum­bus. Sky wanted to let me know to be sure and watch the pro­gram, which I did and was sad­dened by the fact that he didn’t. Sky died on Jan­u­ary 20 at the age of 80.

Tues­day Trip­pier is a writer and mother of four with a spe­cial inter­est in green and local living.

Posted by Tuesday Trippier on Feb 12 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.