Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 14:06:32 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Just tripped over this on the web...
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

I was wandering around on the web while waiting for a build to finish, and
I found this.  I figured it might be worth sharing prior to the meeting
tonight.
You can find it on the web at:

   http://www.bucconeer.worldcon.org/BR3/17_wsfa.htm

I'm hoping Alexis will grant permission after the fact for posting this...

==========

A WSFA Memoir
by Alexis A. Gilliland

Well, in the beginning, there were these people-mostly young and mostly
male–who got together because of a mutual interest in science fiction. The
year was 1946, and the place was the library at the American Rail Road
Association building. Miss Elizabeth Cullen, the librarian, would stay late
to accommodate the little literary society-it met in a library to discuss
books, what else could it be? After several years, when she retired, Miss
Cullen invited the boys to meet in her home. That is where Bob Pavlat, the
Bergs, Warren Felkel (who introduced me to the club in 1956; I liked it,
but it was in conflict with the DC Chess League), and Bill Evans (who
worked with me at the National Bureau of Standards) plotted Discon I,
eventually held in 1963. And there WSFA continued to meet until Miss
Cullen's dog died in 1967, and her son moved her into the Roosevelt Hotel.

WSFA came home from NYCon III and discovered that home wasn't there any
more. Then WSFA President Jay Haldeman coped with the crisis by getting
volunteers to hold meetings at their homes, passing the meetings around so
nobody would get stuck with the detail. Dolly and I lived at 2126
Pennsylvania Ave. NW, at the time, and sometime that fall we took the first
Friday meeting as an excuse to have a party. WSFA has been meeting at Chez
Gilliland going on 30 years now.

The old days seem a bit lean, in retrospect, because the club didn't have a
lot of money in the treasury. Disclave would pull fifty or sixty people--on
Mother's Day weekend--and was not then the money spinner that it became
later. The solution to having an unfunded party was volunteerism and
sharing, and people, not always the same people, would bring a six pack or
a bottle of wine and sometimes a collection would be taken up to buy a case
of beer. Generally a good time would be had by all.

When Disclave did begin to make money there was the problem of how it
should be spent. One side wanted to party, and the other side wanted to
pursue a higher calling: to bid for Worldcons. Eventually WSFA did both,
but in funding a biweekly party as it does today, the club also stopped
expressing the spirit of sharing and volunteerism that had characterized
the earlier club. I think it's still there; one of the remarkable things
about WSFA is how little the character of the club has changed over the
years.

© 1997 Alexis A. Gilliland. All rights reserved.
==========