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"Until age 5, my real heroes were Walt Disney’s ‘Three Little Pigs.’ My whole world revolved around them,” said John Fricke, 58, of his childhood in Milwaukee, where his mother still belongs to Christ the King Lutheran Church in Brookfield.
Then came Nov. 3, 1956, when CBS aired The Wizard of Oz for the first time. “Everybody with whom I watched it had a nice evening,” Fricke said. “I had the life-changing experience.”
John Fricke welcomes enthusiasts gathering in Wamego, Kan., for the annual OZtoberFest weekend.
For the next seven years, every birthday and Christmas meant another Oz book or Judy Garland album. That progressed to a teenaged Fricke writing for Oz and Garland fanzines. And now he’s widely considered the preeminent Judy Garland and Wizard of Oz author/historian.
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© 2013 Augsburg Fortress, Publishers
