There are now 65 years of Candle Club stories, but not all are quite fit to print

Wichita’s legendary Candle Club celebrates its 65th anniversary this week, but there’s just one problem in telling the tale of the private club known for its Rat Pack vibe.

As one well-known businessman put it when asked if he has any good old stories from back in the day: “Nothing you can print, baby.”

You might be able to catch his drift by looking at early help-wanted ads for what seemed to briefly be known as the Candle Club and Flame Lounge. The listings sought “Attractive girls 20 to 30” for hostess and waitress positions with the “Best pay.”

Later, the ads were revised to seek “attractive and dependable” women ages 21 to 30.

“There was a mystery to the Candle in the old days,” said David Jabara. “This was old Wichita money.”

Another ad for a secretary-bookkeeper, with the “perfect hours” of noon to 7 p.m., described the Candle as “An exclusive professional and businessman’s club.”

It’s no secret that men were the focus in the ’60s and ’70s.

A couple of doctors even had their own phone lines there, occasionally having to leave to go deliver a baby or tend to a patient.

Pizza Hut co-founder Frank Carney introduced a young Bill Warren to the Candle early in his movie theater career.

“It was kind of the Pizza Hut corporate hangout,” Warren said.

His friends Marvin Autry of Midwest Corporate Aviation and automobile dealer Mike Steven were fixtures at the Candle for decades, each with their own tables in the darkly lit lounge.

“Most of his business was done there,” Brandon Steven said at the time of his third cousin’s death in 2022.

In Mike Steven’s honor when he died, the club didn’t seat anyone at his table, which had a sign with his name on it, an unlit cigarette in an ashtray and his favorite Ten High bourbon with a splash of water.

Jabara said that “the Marvin Autry table was where airplane deals were done.”

“He just sat there drinking, holding court.”

Once, Steven literally held court as judge for a dispute between Warren and Autry, who used to bet on anything, such as what the price of gas might be the next week.

They made a $500 bet that Warren clearly lost, but he wrote Autry a check for only $50. For months, Warren pretended that was the correct amount. Steven, who was not in on the joke, eventually ruled in Warren’s favor before Warren fessed up and paid the $500.

Warren, who these days prefers a well-lit private back room for more sedate meals — usually sans alcohol — still laughs about some of their misadventures.

“It was never boring.”

Cedar roots

The Candle Club’s roots are in another longtime Wichita staple: the former Cedar Saloon on East 13th Street just west of Oliver.

Brothers Ted and Tom Werts, who used to own the Flame in the same center, sold the business as a down payment for the Candle.

They wanted a larger, private club that would be exclusive yet still within reach of the average person.

The first Candle site opened near Kellogg and Woodlawn in 1960.

Clint Werts said his uncle, Tom Werts, was especially charismatic and worked the front of the house while his father, Ted Werts, handled back-of-the-house operations.

They further had a vision for a tucked-away site, so about five years later, they leased space at the back of the Prairie Village shopping center at the southwest corner of 13th and Woodlawn. To this day, a lot of Wichitans don’t even know it’s there.

Before opening at the new space, they had a dead-of-the-night operation to move what were known as the wagon wheels from Kellogg.

These are massive drop-down ceiling canopies, thus necessitating the move when other vehicles weren’t out.

Partly made of mahogany, they may have once also had cloth to filter light from above.

“They’re definitely unique,” said Wichita architect Dean Bradley.

Later, white stucco circular patterns were added to the ceiling, mimicking the feel of the wagon wheels. Members refer to these as clouds. The wheels and clouds almost seem to denote various seating areas, Bradley said.

The architect was Richard Burke, who is best known for creating Pizza Hut’s red roof.

Though not as well known as that iconic roof, the Candle Club’s retro feel is part of what makes it a draw for locals and their out-of-town guests and business contacts.

“Architecturally,” Bradley said, “it is real interesting.”

To say the least

Clint Werts grew up at the Candle Club.

“Everybody was so nice to me.”

He said he loved the “crazy good food,” like prime rib, beef wellington, shrimp scampi, lobster and crab legs.

“It was a lot of fun to say the least.”

He wasn’t the only child to hang out there.

Marketer Bruce Rowley remembers sleeping in the booths when his parents, Patric and Betty Rowley, would dine there.

When he moved back to Wichita, he and his father had lunch there nearly every week.

‘My kids grew up going there, and they know the Candle for ‘winner, winner chicken dinner,’ ” a buffet on Monday nights.

Werts’ mother, Norma, was a waitress at the Candle before marrying his father. They wed in Las Vegas, and Werts said his father didn’t expect his new wife to keep working.

“She showed up to work, and he’s like, ‘What are you doing?’ ”

Werts said his parents were a team, and his mother was essential to the club’s success.

“She gave him the stability in life and the direction that a lot of good men need to be successful.”

Clint Werts grew up to become a Candle bartender and eventually general manager. His mother died when he was 30.

“My dad made a really good run,” Werts said. “It’s a hard lifestyle. You’re at work when everybody else is playing.”

Not that he and his father didn’t have fun, too.

Once, Clint Werts and Wink Hartman II were imbibing at the Candle when they decided it would be a good idea to fly to Vegas. Werts raided the petty cash before they drove to the airport, and 36 hours after being in Sin City, they didn’t have enough money to even buy a hot dog on the way home.

“Well, now there’s a skeleton,” Werts said after being reminded of the story.

Alcohol, or poor judgment in general, seems to be behind a lot of the Candle stories.

One of Jabara’s favorite Candle moments came when Shocker basketball Coach Gene Smithson was having a great year.

That didn’t stop a Candle regular from trying to teach Smithson “how to run the UCLA high-low post offense” with ketchup and mustard bottles and salt-and-pepper shakers, Jabara said.

Werts said that “every day was a fun day.”

Most days had a story or two as well, he said.

“Some of them I can’t tell. That’s the mystique of the Candle”

The romantic period

Thirty five years after opening the Candle, Ted Werts sold it in 2000 to Alta and Bill DeVore.

Alta DeVore said she wasn’t a member when she first started going to the Candle in the 1970s.

“There were two or three of us girls who always got in because of the band.”

She went on to work in country clubs in Winfield and Arkansas City.

“You couldn’t go anywhere without being a member of a club.”

She ran other bars before her husband decided they should buy the Candle so she could run it.

DeVore saw a lot in her almost decade there.

“There were a lot of romances that ended and started there,” she said. “I’m not going to tell any stories. It was just a different period of time then.”

DeVore still misses being there daily.

“I just didn’t want to let go.”

She at least has a lifetime membership, though.

“I still like popping into the kitchen and seeing what’s going on.”

Louis Thompson, who was part of the Candle’s third ownership group, presided over the club when one of the more infamous incidents of the recent era occurred.

The polite way to put it is a Candle regular and a particularly well-known attorney had an altercation.

There are stories about what, or who, it may have been over, but not many people are willing to discuss specifics.

Nor will Thompson talk about the details except to say he wasn’t there when it happened but was quickly informed.

A video showed what went down.

“I drove up there immediately and erased all footage. I didn’t want anybody having it.”

‘Candelabras galore’

Today, the Candle Club is something of a cleaned-up version of itself, literally and figuratively.

The fourth membership group, led by managing partner Judah Craig, has extensively renovated the space and has plans for more — specifically the ladies restroom.

They also added LaVela — which means “the candle” in Italian — next door as an event space.

Though the Candle has evolved as all businesses do, Bradley said it’s done so “pretty much without losing the character.”

Craig said that was the intention of the partners, who include Steve Ruud, Gary Austerman, Nate Robertson, Brian Thornton and Susan Patterson. They bought the business in 2014.

One piece of decor they cut back on was candelabras.

“There were candelabras galore,” Craig said. “I mean, a lot.”

He took down some of them — they’re still saved in storage while Craig figures out what to do with them — to make room for some Rat Pack paintings. He also took down ones hanging from the wagon wheels.

“We had to update those because they were getting pretty worn down and hanging and people were hitting their heads on them.”

He also moved the stage and dance floor and doubled the size of the bar, including taking the half a wagon wheel over it and adding another half to fit the new bar size.

His group’s most controversial move was to eliminate smoking in the lounge and dining areas. Now, it’s confined to a back room called the Boardroom and a new patio just off of it.

“That’s been a big deal for us,” Craig said.

There was some grumbling for sure. Instead of losing a lot of members over it, though, he said, “Our membership has grown significantly over the years.”

It’s now at about 1,300 memberships, including corporate memberships with more than one member. That’s up from about 500 or 600 when Craig’s group took it over.

He said there are all kinds of planned events and parties now, such as ladies bingo at lunch, fashion shows and trivia nights, not unlike what Alta and Bill DeVore used to offer.

“We have something for everybody.”

When the smoke clears

Ron Ryan first stepped into the Candle Club in 1967 for a meeting with Jack DeBoer.

This was before Ryan went on to start Ryan Aviation. He was interviewing to be DeBoer’s pilot.

DeBoer asked Ryan how much he’d need to get paid. Ryan named his price, and DeBoer quickly agreed.

“I thought, oh crap, I didn’t ask for near enough.”

He also remembers what the Candle looked, and smelled, like at the time.

“It stunk,” he said of the smoke, “. . . and it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned out for 4,000 years.”

He continued going through the years, but his wife refused until Craig followed through on his promise to create a better environment.

“I’m so impressed with what he’s done there,” Ryan said. “It’s a real positive for the city of Wichita.”

Rhonda McAdoo has been a Candle member for five years, the first two of which she never had to pay the monthly membership fee — it’s now $50 — because it was waived each time she got someone new to sign up.

She’s brought friends from Vegas there and said that “they said, ‘Man, there’s nothing like this in Vegas.’ ”

Brad Rine said his father was a young man in the oil business in the ’60s and used to decline Candle invitations because of the wilder members it sometimes attracted.

His father viewed it “as a place that you didn’t want to be associated with at the time and at his age.”

Eventually, that changed, and when his mother was widowed, “she and her little lady friends started going there at lunch.”

“If my mom was willing to do that, she wasn’t worried about the reputation anymore.”

His own wife now “sits with the Table of Knowledge on Mondays,” which is one of the many formal and informal groups that meets there.

Legacy lives on

Craig feels like his group “took the Candle Club from the 17th century into about the 18th century, 19th century. So we’re getting there.”

He said he quickly learned the world of the Candle has changed like the world around it — the reason the popular salad bar isn’t there anymore — and members expect something different from him as the operator.

Initially, Craig said, “I had a cocktail up there with me and a cigar, and I was greeting people as they came in. And you could just tell it didn’t have a professional approach. . . . It clicked pretty quick for me, fortunately.”

He rarely even drinks now.

Craig’s focus is on continuing the Candle’s legacy. He said Clint Werts was gracious with his help when he began running the business.

“I’m a 28-year-old kid when I started here, and I’m trying to change a 50-year-old club at that time, you know? And so he was kind of my guy that I would ask that permission, or, hey, is there any reason we should or shouldn’t do this?”

A picture of Ted and Norma Werts hangs in the foyer, and there are a couple of private rooms named for them.

Craig is working on a membership handbook and history of the club.

“We’re doing a lot of our own interviews and kind of piecing that together. Because I think, you know, everybody always asks, what do I get from our membership? Why is the club unique? And so we’re really trying to tell, and we feel like it’s that next chapter of growing into kind of making our own identity now from what it was, but keeping that in mind.”