Former co-workers, friends remember 'Uncle Vic' Blecman

ELYRIA — Lorain County lost an icon of the 1970s and 1980s on Friday. Radio personality, DJ and former owner of Uncle Vic's nightclub, Victor "Uncle Vic" Blecman died of pancreatic cancer on Friday. He was 67. "He was one of a kind," said Flash Gordon, a DJ who worked with Blecman. "... He was a comedian, basically. He would do the funniest, craziest things. Vic was very inventive, he was way ahead of his time." Gordon recalled a time where Blecman and the owner of Uncle Vic's ran a promotion that Blecman would run his moped over 16 semis. And when the day came, Blecman lined up 16 Matchbox toy semis and jumped his moped over them. Blecman loved his moped, Gordon said. "It was just funny back then," Gordon said. Paul McCrann, a former DJ and now owner of Cookies' 10 Pin in Elyria, was a general manager and DJ at Uncle Vic's. He said Blecman was the kind of DJ that wasn't seen very often. From the DJ booth, Blecman was the entertainer. McCrann said he loved talking to people from the booth. Blecman would hold monologues inside his booth and held the crowd. McCrann said the monologues were because Blecman sometimes forgot to load the next record. But Blecman never lost his cool. "Vic was the personality," McCrann said. I learned from his personality. He knew how to get the crowd going with more than just the music. ... Vic was entertaining. Vic taught me how to talk to people up on that stage. It was Vic. Everyone came in to see him." The notoriety of Blecman spread outside the nightclub. Blecman DJ'd for dances and parties and he was also a radio personality on WGCL for a while, which is now 98.5 WNCX-FM. He had the top-rated Sunday night show from 1979 to 1986. "He could walk through downtown and everybody wanted to meet him and talk to him," McCrann said. "That's the kind of guy he was. He always had some good stories. He was a heck of a musician." People even had little dolls of Blecman and "Uncle Vic" dollars. Blecman once donated the doll-sized replica of Uncle Vic to The Chronicle-Telegram's Not Forgotten Box. Blecman made the list of Cleveland Magazine's 85 most interesting people in 1985. Uncle Vic's nightclub opened in 1977 under a different name. It wasn't until about 1979 that Blecman came on the scene and it turned into Uncle Vic's. He partially owned the club until about 1985, when he sold out his share. Tom Kelley knew not just Blecman but also his father and uncle. The two men owned an IGA store in Elyria and Kelley's dad had a cash register repair business. "He's like the icon of the era," Kelley said. "Everyone knew Uncle Vic's. It was all disco when I was in there from the '70s to '80s. It was like being in 'Saturday Night Fever' when you were there. He was a real nice guy, always in there talking to people and a really good musician." Blecman played just about any instrument, and McCrann said the DJ was a great singer. Blecman even had a drum set in the night club that he would play to songs. And before the nightclub, Blecman was in a band that played around the area and in downtown Cleveland. Curly black hair was one of Blecman's trademarks, and the butt of several jokes. "He was a very strange-looking guy," Gordon laughed. "He looked like a water buffalo and he laughed about it." But outside of the DJ booth, Blecman liked his space. McCrann and Gordon recalled him being a shy guy, but that he was a good friend and a kind man. Kelley said Blecman and his father and uncle were incredibly nice people. Blecman was a native to the area, a 1970 graduate of Elyria High School. "He was a personality," McCrann said. "He was very big in Cleveland, but he was huge in Lorain County. ... I wanted to be like Uncle Vic, but there was no way I could be Uncle Vic." Contact Laina Yost at (440) 329-7121 or lyost@chroniclet.com. Follow her on Twitter @MissLainaMae.