The doctor said to me, “Phil, your playing days are over.”

Phil Bernie took up the trumpet at an early age and spent a career playing with bands on the road and on his own television show in Rochester, N.Y. When he was 63, his horn-playing came to an abrupt end and he was forced to find a new outlet for his talent. Bernie, 65, and his wife, Terry, live in Mission Hills.

I played a duet in grade school with Arnold, a French horn player. That’s when it hit me. We played the tune called “Romance.” My legs were shaking all over. I started out as nervous as could be, and then as the number was progressing, I got over that nervousness. When we finished, I felt like a million bucks.

That’s a feeling that never leaves you. I was hooked. I think once the floodlights are on you, there’s no turning back. It does its job.

I was a soloist in grade school, and when I was about 11 years old they had me playing first trumpet in the junior high and senior high bands and orchestra. I was the littlest fellow in the whole band.

I used to skip school sometimes in grade school and go down to the coal bin and play the horn against the coal. The coal absorbs the sound. I’d play until 12 o’clock at night. I loved that horn so much, I couldn’t put it down. When the other guys were on the baseball lot playing ball, I was practicing. Nobody had to tell me to practice the horn.

During the service I was the guy who woke everybody up. The officer of the day used to come and wake me up, and I’d go with him to the flagpole, and I would play first call and reveille.

When I got discharged, I felt that music was the field I wanted to pursue. I just seemed to feel that the man upstairs gave me a little edge and directed my way.

I was on the road, moving all around. It’s so vivid in my mind, it’s like it happened yesterday. I could just think of walking into the Beck’s Restaurant over here in Hagertown, Md. That was in the beginning of my orchestra, when I had my small group, it’s just like I can picture it. I worked in all the different cities.

I loved that trumpet. Even to this day I have tears because I miss it. I can’t play any more. The doctors won’t let me.

I was getting ready to do some shows. I had some of the guys from Lawrence Welk’s orchestra in rehearsal. I was talking to a friend of mine, and I started to perspire. Then, all of a sudden, I went right down. I hit the floor and I’m screaming my head off.

I had what they call an incarcerated hernia. He rushed me to the Veteran’s Hospital over on Plummer and they saved my life. It’s common for trumpet players to get hernias. That was my third.

The doctor said to me, “Phil, your playing days are over.” I says, “What are you talking about? This is all I know. I’ve got everything now. All these years I worked up to this point.”

What should I do? I looked at all sorts of things. For about a year and a half, I was going crazy because I didn’t know what to do.

One day my son-in-law, Roy, says, “You know Phil, Bonnie and I just came back from Las Vegas. We saw David Copperfield, a good magic show.” I heard what he said, and I took off for the library in Granada Hills. I looked up books on conjuring and magic and everything I could lay my hands on. Just like with the trumpet, all of a sudden, I says, “Jeez, I want to do it, I want to do it. I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it.”

I heard about the Society of American Magicians and I joined them. We had one meeting already that started at 7:30 and we didn’t even get out of there until 12:30 at night. They were very helpful, very friendly. Some of them do this along with their jobs or their businesses.

I plan on doing something with it. I’m a young guy now. I’m getting younger all the time, and I believe in having a lot of fun, and being a magician is fun. I want to be the best damned magician you ever saw. And I made up my mind, I’m going to be. If I was good at the trumpet, I can learn to be good at this.