Jerry Andrus - Early Life

Early Life

Andrus was born January 28, 1918 in Sheridan, Wyoming. At the age of 10, he moved to Albany, Oregon, where he lived until his death in 2007. At 12, Andrus became interested in the art of illusion when he saw a performance of a reformed "spiritual medium". He joined the International Society of Junior Magicians when he was 16 and by his 40's became known as a "magician’s magician". According to long-time friend Ray Hyman, Jerry's mother was a fundamentalist Christian, and his father died when Jerry was young. Jerry became a skeptic when he was about 12. His middle school had lost a basketball game to a rival school, and students were blaming the referees for bad calls as the reason for the loss. Jerry had an epiphany that the other school would be saying the same thing if the loss had gone the other way. From that moment on, Jerry began to challenge the beliefs he had taken for granted before.