Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2006 12:09:17 -0500 (EST)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Sad news: Dick Eney
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

In a few months his birthdate will show up at
http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/.  I suggest we lay the issue to
rest until then.

That site bases their data on Social Security records, and that
government agency tends to be pretty careful about people's ages,
for obvious reasons.

It's an amazing site.  But it does tend to run a few months behind.
Since it's intended for genealogists, I guess there's no reason for
it to be updated more often.

It was from that site that I concluded, early last year, that one
of WSFA's seven founders, Phyllisann Courtis, was still alive.
Unfortunately she died within a few days of my discovering this.

I no longer have access to WSFA's archives, so I can't look up when
Dick started attending WSFA.  The meeting minutes are nearly complete,
except for gap in the mid-1970s (and possibly another gap this year)
so the current secretary, Drew Bittner, should be able to look it up
if he's willing to devote a few hours to poring through the archives.
Unfortunately, I was unable to completely placing all the old material
on the website.  I placed the past 31 years online, but not the 27
years before that.

Searching is *enormously* easier when something is online.  For
instance last September Mike Walsh discovered that WSFA's then-
president had a letter printed in Time magazine in 1949.  Imagine how
much effort it would have been for him to physically leaf through
the past 3000 back issues of Time and a hundred other magazines and
newspapers, while eyeballing for any mention of WSFA.

When material is online, it's also accessible to more people, and less
likely to be forever lost.  Okay, physical copies of Time magazine
from 1949 will probably be around forever, albeit not in most people's
homes, but some old WSFA Journals may have only one or two surviving
copies, and the handwritten meeting minutes only exist in one place,
and are certain to be lost or destroyed eventually.  I'm impressed
that they've lasted this long.

I checked my "50 years ago" column in the WSFA Journals I produced,
and Dick Eney apparently didn't attend in 1954 or 1955.  He shows up
often in the "40 years ago" column, plus I know he mentioned WSFA in
his Fancyclopedia II in 1959.  Of course he may have attended prior to
1954, I don't know.