Earlier this summer, an era came to an end with the death of Walter William “Billy” Thorne Jr., one of Westhampton Beach’s most colorful native sons and the legendary owner for nearly 40 years of Magic’s Pub and The Artful Dodger.
For decades, Thorne has been a beloved figure in bars and restaurants from Manorville to Montauk, eventually taking on an almost mythical status — but at his core, he was a local big brother who cared deeply for his community, proving it over and over with quiet deeds and loyal kinship.
The son of a high school baseball pitcher — who is said to have once struck out a teenage Carl Yastrzemski four times in one game — Thorne was nearly recruited by two major league baseball teams in his college days.
“He was quite a good pitcher,” says old friend Peter Anderson. “And that’s why they called him ‘Magic’: you never knew where the ball was coming from or going to.”
The Westhampton Beach High School baseball field is named after Thorne’s father, Walter.
Billy Thorne was a storm of contradictions: a star athlete who could drink nearly anyone, anywhere, under the table; an altar boy who went on to party with The Pagans motorcycle gang when they dropped into the Artful Dodger for beers on their way to Hot Dog Beach in the late 1970s; a man who became famous for his boozy trademark saying, “Quack, quack,” while quietly taking in and looking after troubled teens and paying for the funerals of the parents of some of his down-on-their-luck friends.
Back in the day — no one remembers exactly when — some of his friends brought a white duck into the Artful Dodger.
“And they just kept laughing because Billy was walking around the Dodger going ‘Quack. Quack. Quack,’ says his sister Carol. “And I think that’s how it started.”
Crazy Like a Fox
“There’s two different Billy Thornes,” says Anderson. “There’s daytime Billy, when he comes into Lynne’s [Cards and Gifts], and is buying his scratch offs, and he’s very shy and quiet. And then there’s the Billy that we know at the bar. But here’s the thing that I learned over the years: Billy wasn’t really as drunk as everybody thought. A lot of that is who he became, but he was the furthest thing from the bumbling drunk that people thought he was.”
Jen Kessenich, who started bussing tables at Magic’s at age 14, and met her future husband there — Mark Kessenich, then a Magic’s dish washer — says there was always more than meets the eye when it came to her old boss.
“That whole crazy façade was a façade,” she says. “He was crazy like a fox. I think he did it because if anything ever went down, he couldn’t be held responsible — because he’s the crazy guy standing on the Pac Man machine with a Viking helmet on. Nobody would question him. And even when people would demand to see the manager, I’d say, ‘Are you sure? He’s right there on top of the Pac Man machine.’ And they’d be like, ‘Never mind.’”
Kessenich says Thorne had a head for numbers that often stunned friends and employees.
“He taught his accountant loopholes that the guy didn’t even know existed,” she says. “He was just a brilliant numbers guy. He wrote on this little calendar in the kitchen every day how many cheeseburgers sold. And he could tell you, with his photographic memory, ‘three years ago, on this day, we sold 482 cheeseburgers. And today, we sold this many.’ He’s like ‘Rain Man’ — he just had this recall of numbers that was astounding.”
Anderson agrees.
Just by keeping track of the beer bottles in the dumpster out back, Thorne could tell what the register should ring.
“He would tell his bartenders, ‘I bet you I can tell you how much money is in the register right now, or how much money should be in the register,'” Anderson says. “Actually, it really kept everybody honest.”
Thorne’s younger brother, Jimmy “Kokomo” Thorne, says he was a meticulous bookkeeper, both on paper and in his head.
“When someone borrowed money, even if [Billy] was three sheets to the wind, he never forgot exactly what was lent to who. He knew where all the money was all the time.”
Jimmy Thorne says throughout his career his brother kept daily track of sales in a little notebook, beside entries describing bad weather or any other reason that would account for a low turnout.
Thorne’s tax attorney recently told Jimmy a story about his brother: When the numbers man came in during one particular tax season to help Thorne with an audit, the barman taught the tax attorney a thing or two about accounting — strategies he used for the rest of his career.
Star Pitcher
The oldest of seven children, Thorne served for years as an altar boy at Immaculate Conception church in Quiogue, across the street from his childhood home.
“We were doing six or seven masses a day on Sundays back then,” says Thorne’s lifelong friend and fellow altar boy Red Alpert. “We’d ‘taste’ the wine before we gave it to the priest,” he recalls with a chuckle.
As a kid, Thorne caddied at Westhampton Country Club and later became caddie master. He became a club member in 1973.
Thorne lettered in baseball, basketball and football at Westhampton Beach High School, and went on to pitch at Rhode Island’s Bryant College where he majored in business.
By that time, his pitching had attracted the attention of some major league clubs. A scout for the Milwaukee Braves spotted Thorne at an annual Sag Harbor baseball tournament, and later wrote a letter asking him to come play in Milwaukee, though it’s unclear if he ever tried out.
The New York Yankees were also interested. “The Braves said they were looking forward to seeing him again, and the Yankees told him to wait until spring, because they were going to watch him pitch up at Bryant College,” Jimmy says.
“But he didn’t go back to school because that fall our father passed away. Because he missed the fall, he was ineligible to play in the spring.”
His sister Carol Thorne says that she has “always wondered if he gave up [his major league dreams] because of his position as the oldest after dad died. I always wondered if he felt he had to stay home.”
Thorne was 23 when he became the family patriarch.
“I’ll never forget one night,” Carol says. “It was just me and my mom in the house and we ran out of heating oil. And I said, ‘let’s call Billy,’ and she’s like ‘No!’ So we slept in one bed together; it was so cold. But Billy found out, and after that, the heating bill got paid.”
Life — and lifeblood — of the Party
From the start, Thorne earned the loyalty and longtime employment of his employees by keeping staff on the books even during the slowest months and staffing his bars with local young people who needed both the money and the structure of a job.
“He would bring troubled kids in to give him help, and help straighten them out, give them a job,” says Carol.
Former employee Jeff Dalder says “he took me off the street when I was 14, and I started working for him.”
Thorne used to treat his waitresses to all-expense paid treks into the city, limousine and all, to see Broadway shows.
For twenty years, he chartered a pair of buses to take Magic’s regulars and staffers into the Bronx for Yankees games.
“We’d have t-shirts that said ‘Magic’s’ and everything and he would get beer — three 15-gallon drums of beer on each bus: one in the front, one in the middle and one in the back,” Anderson says.
Oftentimes, he’d buy the tickets himself and only charge the guys for the cost of the bus rentals, his friends say.
On the Fourth of July, 1983, he sent his sister’s family to a Yankees game, which turned out to be pitcher Dave Righetti’s legendary no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox.
Another time he told some of his staff that he couldn’t use eight tickets to that night’s Yankees game, and sent them instead.
“They all went, and came back, and told us they had sat in [Yankees owner George] Steinbrenner’s box. It turned out one of Steinbrenner’s guys used to live nearby and he’d come into Magic’s and that’s where Billy got the tickets,” Jimmy recalls.
In the late 1990s, Thorne sponsored — and inspired — a local Police Athletic League basketball team that was short on cash.
“[Family friend] Gregory Overton told me, ‘I promised Billy we would be number one that season — and we were. And 10 years later, seven kids on that team went on to win the state championships,’” Jimmy remembers.
The good memories shared by his family and friends go on like extra innings in an endless ball game. Even the funny ones are laced with the continuous thread of Thorne’s friendship, care and humor — and maybe the echo of duck.
“I worked the door at Magic’s on St. Patty’s Day, the only day in the year Billy would charge a cover… And what we would constantly hear is, ‘I don’t have to pay. I’m a good friend of Quack Quack,'” recalls Anderson.
Anderson and his fellow bouncers would demand to know Thorne’s given name.
“And they’d say ‘Quack. Quack,’” Anderson laughs. “And we’d say ‘no, his given name,’ and they’d say, ‘I think it might be Billy?’ If they didn’t know his given name was Walter then I would just say, ‘No. I guess you don’t know him that well after all.’
“The funniest times would be when Billy was standing right there watching all this happen.”
