Alice Plasterer Stickler '48 Carries on Unusual Legacy of Bubble Blowing

June 4, 2004

[DOWNLOAD VIDEO: "See 1987 TV Story on Eiffel Plasterer '24" 5983KB]

June 4, 2004, Greencastle, Ind. - "Alice [Plasterer] Stickler possesses an unusual legacy. It's not a family farm or business, not an heirloom or other treasured family property," writes Nancy Vendrely in Indiana's Fort Wayne Journal Gazette of Stickler, a 1948 DePauw University graduate. "Her legacy is fragile and ephemeral. It appears and disappears. If she tried to hold onto it, it would dissolve in her hands Stickler makes bubbles. And, like her father before her, she does it to entertain and to educate."

The feature article, which includes several photos of Alice Stickler blowing elaborate soap bubbles, notes that she is the daughter of "Eiffel Gray Plasterer, [who] was known as 'The Bubble Wizard' and 'Huntington's National Treasure' [and was a 1924 DePauw graduate]. He turned his interest in physics and chemistry into a bubble show that fascinated children and adults from coast to coast for 60 years. He appeared on national TV shows; big-city newspapers wrote articles about him... Plasterer had become intrigued with the science of bubbles while a college student at DePauw University in the 1920s and developed his demonstrations as an avocation to his teaching career. He taught physics and chemistry at Huntington High School for more than 20 years and also had a sorghum farm. In 1987, [DOWNLOAD VIDEO: "Professor Bubbles" 5983KB]

Alice Stickler served as her father's assistant onstage from 1977 to 1989, and appeared with him on David Letterman's late night television show. Eiffel Plasterer died in 1989. Two years later, Alice decided to carry on the family tradition and perform her own bubble shows.

"Tricks include making a bubble blow out a candle, getting a bubble to go back into a bottle and -- the one her father had the most fun with -- making a bubble 'climb' up an incline on a straightened-out coat hanger, thus appearing to defy gravity," Vendrely writes. Alice Stickler tells the newspaper, "You never know if it's going to go or not. I try a couple of times and I may go on (to something else) or I'll talk to the bubbles. 'Come on, you can do it. Get up there.' It can be nerve-wracking, especially when you're fighting the air conditioning [which moves the air and the bubbles around]. A big crowd can make a difference, too. Because of all the carbon dioxide in the room, the bubbles won't last as long."