From: "Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Minutes of the November 5th meeting are online
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 19:05:02 -0500
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Elspeth Kovar" <ekovar at worldnet.att.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 1:57 PM
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Minutes of the November 5th meeting are online

[quoting Keith:]
> >
> >History shows that we can recover from such doldrums.  One Disclave
> >had just 22 (!) members, none of whom were pros.  A few years later,
> >Disclaves had over 1400 people.  (For sufficiently large values of
> >"a few years".)
>
> In this case we're not recovering from the doldrums, we're trying to
build
> up a new convention.  (""But how can I have more tea when I haven't had
any
> yet?" asked Alice.")

Keith's was hardly a fair example.   The early Disclaves (I had thought
there were two, but I see there were apparently three -- I wonder why no
one ever talked, back then, about three instead of two?) were Very
Different affairs, lasting for only one afternoon, and booked into a
meeting hall somewhere.   They rarely drew many out-of-towners.   (In this
respect they were like the Lunacons of the late '50s and early '60s;
Lunacon didn't become a weekend convention until some time around 1964 or
1965.)

And that last of the original three Disclaves (which may have drawn a pro
whose name Keith didn't recognize) so dispirited what was left of WSFA
(which was down to around a half dozen attending members when I joined it
in September, 1954) that they had no thought of doing another one.

But soon after I joined WSFA, it began to revive.  Founding members Bill
Evans, Bob Pavlat and Chick Derry began attending meetings again regularly,
Dick Eney returned from overseas, and a whole new crew of younger fans
(like myself) had joined -- George Spencer, John Magnus, John Hitchcock
(those two Johns, from Baltimore), Jack Harness, Phil Castora, Fred von
Bernewitz and Bob Burleson among others.   I believe it was Bob Pavlat who
suggested we revive Disclave in 1958, and I'm sure one of his reasons was
for WSFA to get some experience putting on cons, so that we could bid for
the 1960 Worldcon (which we did -- but lost to Pittsburgh in a separate
scandal).

The first revived Disclave drew a number of out of town fans -- the
Silverbergs among them -- but got us told not to come back to the Arva (on
Route 50 in Arlington, near Fort Myer).   One notable NYC fan had been
lurching about in a drunken state and it scared the chaperones for the
crossing-guard kids who were sharing the Arva with us (those kids had
annual gettogethers in DC).

So we moved out to New York Avenue and a succession of somewhat seedy
motels, and attendance fell off.  But a devoted crew from NYC (Larry &
Noreen Shaw, the Silverbergs, Ayjay Budrys, Dick & Pat Lupoff, and -- after
we'd moved to NYC in 1959 -- Sylvia and myself) made the trek every year,
even when the entire convention (mostly those I just named) ended up
partying in just one room.   There was little or no programming until the
early '60s.   But there was a Traditional Banquet, originally at the A. V.
Restaurante.

The 1963 Discon put a temporary halt to Disclave, but it was revived in
1965 by a newly re-revived WSFA, which was now being run by the Haldeman
brothers and their wives, and their friends.   They put a lot of fresh
energy into the club, and it was from that point (1965) that Disclave began
its climb into more ambitious programming and higher attendance.

--Ted White