We have a mutual friend, Ron Cearns (now deceased), who I knew as the founder of the Tolkien Club at Grossmont High School, and Richard knew as a co-founder of Comic-Con. (This was news to me.) One day Richard showed me a page from the first 1970 Comic-Con show guide -- published after the fact -- that dealt with the history of San Diego "fandom." Pay special attention to the second paragraph:

San Diego Fandom History from 1970 Comic-Con guide

"We don't know anything about this mini-mini-con in 1969," Richard told me. "We've even had members of the press inquire about this, and we don't know what to tell them."

Well, dear, friends, I have some answers. I was there. And if I'd payed closer attention at the time, I'd have even more answers.

Some Partial Answers in a Tortured Tale

It's hard to know where to begin this story, so I'll just arbitrarily start with the Scholastic Book Club.

They were and are a company that sells good, cheap books directly to kids in classrooms.

In 1967, when I was a Freshman at Grossmont High School in La Mesa & El Cajon, California. (the town line runs through the school campus), I bought J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" (1937) from the Scholastic Book Club.

the 1966 Ballantine edition many of us got from Scholastic

I believe this was the way many high school students were introduced to his work in this time frame.

A year later, in fall of 1968, when I was a sophomore, I followed a pretty girl (Rouie Collins) into a combined meeting of the Tolkien and German Clubs. Another student I'd known since middle school, Vally Holloway, was also there, so I started going to their social events, mostly parties. (The first was an Oktoberfest in a student's home on October 24, 1968.)

I'd been doing this for just a few weeks when Ron Cearns, leader of the group and a senior, began grooming me to replace him as leader when he graduated. I told him I wasn't so sure about leadership but I was a very good archivist and volunteered to be historian. He subsequently gave me a lot of background data on the club. On Nov. 15th I went along while he helped his mom, a cat breeder, set up for a cat show in Balboa Park, and he unreeled the tale as he worked.

Originally there were six friends at Lemon Avenue Elementary School in La Mesa, California. The reason I still remember this is that I tried to write a parody of the song about nuclear proliferation, "Who's Next?"

by satirist Tom Lehrer,

about the forming of the club. I never finished it, but I still remember the first half-verse:

    First Ron started out with the big six:
    That's Carl, Barb, Sherry, Les and Dic

The "big six" were:

1. Ronald ("Ron") Cearns
2. Carl Spaeth
3. Barbara ("Barb") Banke
4. Sherry Crabtree
5. Leslie ("Les") De Reimer
6. Dicran ("Dic") Baron

from 1969 Grossmont High School yearbook, page 47

And three of them ended up at what we now believe was the first Tolkien Convention ever held. But I'm getting ahead of the story.

This group of friends from Lemon Avenue became the nucleus of the Grossmont High School Tolkien Club. By the time they were all seniors in the fall of 1968, Ron had been working for a while on the problem of recruiting students to carry on when the Class of '69 graduated. That's when I came on the scene, and like me many of the newer club members were sophomores (10th graders) from the class of 1971.

At that point the Tolkien Club was combined with the German Club, and both were sponsored by Miss Kohls, the one of two German language teachers who was actually from Germany. I think Ron may have cut a deal with her because she wanted a German Club and he wanted a Tolkien Club. He had the students and she had the faculty sponsorship. Just a theory. I remember that first Oktoberfest I went to. It turned out there wasn't any Tolkien or German stuff going on that I could see, just a teenage party: playing records, talking, messing around with a strobe light. It was a great way to meet girls. Many similar parties followed.

For some reason the Tolkien/German Club didn't get a photo in the 1969 yearbook, which at Grossmont was called "El Recuerdo" which is Spanish for "permanent record" (I think). Sophomore Marla Anderson started the Human Behavior Club that year, which had a high degree of overlap with the German/Tolkien Club, especially among 10th graders.

from 1969 Grossmont High School yearbook, page 162
back row: Bruce Webster, Marla Anderson, Carl Spaeth, Alan Scrivener, Loretta Hernandez, Steve Petersen
middle row: ???, ???, Eric Lighthart, Robert Spaeth, ???
front row: ???, Karen Holloway, Rouie Collins, Rick Johnson, ???, ???

There was also a very high level of participation in the marching band among German/Tolkien Club members.

(For a table listing all of the folks mentioned in this article see APPENDIX A below.)

But Ron was also busy with a larger dream. He imagined a larger organization (global? galactic?) which he called the Society of the Friends of Hobbits (SOFOH). For starters he wanted to put together a Tolkien Convention during his senior year that would be held at Grossmont High but would draw people from around the state. According to the Fandom History from the Comic-Con show guide for 1970 (which appears at the beginning of this article), he'd been working on this since 1966.

We planned to hold this mini-con, which we just called "SOFOH" (as in "what time does SOFOH start?"), during the first few days of spring break 1969, Friday 28 March through Sunday 30 March. According to my journal we held a SOFOH High Council Meeting on February 28 of that year, and Ron handed out fliers.

I seem to recall there was some scheduling difficulty with band events. The band was award-winning, and so was always taking off to go to parades and half-time shows. Carl, who was our club bard, wrote a parody song about the trials of being in the band, called "Band Days" (to the tune of "School Days") which included the lines:

    Don't try to plan an Easter Fest,
    'Cause we will play in Budapest,
    And if that falls through we're Disney's guest
    When you are a freak in the band

Ron was the powerhouse behind this. He occasionally roped some of us into chores such as stuffing envelopes with fliers, but he was the one who wrote letters to the heads of English departments of California high schools, inviting them to send their students to our convention.

In looking through my archival material I have found a 3x5 card which is an index to a missing item: a small SOFOH poster or handbill. Perhaps one day the handbill will turn up.

index card cataloging missing SOFOH handbill
from the personal collection of Alan Scrivener

The general outline of a plan was something like this:

• Friday night dance at Spaeth brothers'
• Saturday morning Tolkien session at the high school
• Saturday lunch at Ron's house
• Saturday afternoon Tolkien session at the high school
• Saturday dinner at Ron's house
• Saturday night costume party somewhere
• Sunday picnic at El Monte Park
• Sunday dinner at Eric's
• Sunday party at Terry's

There may also have been more sessions planned on Sunday.

What actually happened is that the only people who showed up on Saturday morning for the sessions were people we knew, except for one guy named Andy Niemeir (spelling??), from Coronado High School. Don't get me wrong, he was a great guy. He stayed at my house that night and we became friends. But we were expecting hundreds, and prepared to house dozens. By my count there were 27 people, though the unsigned account in the Comic-Con guide from 1970 shown above says there were 47.

Because I kept a detailed journal in those days, recording even what I wore and ate as well as where I went and who with, I am able to provide some details of the SOFOH weekend and some other conventions I'll be discussing soon. (See APPENDIX for journal excerpts).

We spent the morning session with Ron teaching us the Tengwar script that Tolkien invented for writing Elvish, etc.

At lunch time we went to Ron's, and if memory serves it was there that the mutiny occurred. It was our spring break, but the SOFOH sessions were like more school. I suggested relocating to my house for a swim party. I recall that Ron was upset. (The organizers of subsequent cons have learned to throw in things like movies, games both physical and mental, and performing arts to break up the academic sessions.)

While swimming we decided to have our party that night at Steve Petersen's house. (I also got permission from my parents to have Andy stay over.) In thinking back on this I realized that Ron must have had a party planned for somewhere else, and we were changing the plan. I don't remember for sure.

It is interesting to note the costumes that I listed in my journal from the costume party Saturday night:

• classic Roman
• swami
• soldier
• construction worker
• modern Japanese

a typical Tolkien Club hangout at lunchtime in June 1969
(all sophomores; presumably the seniors were on the Senior Lawn)
from the personal collection of Alan Scrivener

In the summer of 1969 Ron continued his Tolkien fan organizing. He held a SOFOH meeting at his home on July 19. According to my journal, it was also a "PUGG" meeting, though I now have no idea what that means. I wrote:

    Went late to Ron's house for the alleged meeting.  Nothing
    had happened so far.  Pulled up around the table, met people.
    Took notes as Ron told us about all the weird Tolkien groups
    around the world.

Maybe I was feeling guilty for abandoning the Tolkien group that I'd agreed to become historian for, but that week I went to work on the parody of Tom Lehrer's "Who's Next?" that would tell the story of the club.

(The unfinished manuscript is in APPENDIX C.)

The next day, Sunday July 20, 1969, men landed on the moon, and the day after that Neil Armstrong took his one small step. On the day after that, Tuesday, 22 July, 1969, my journal says:

    I came home and managed to spend an ENTIRE AFTERNOON doing things that
    I will never remember because I didn't write them down.  Pretty well
    relaxed until I got a frantic call from Ron about some SF club meeting.

That evening I went with Ron to a bookstore somewhere near San Diego State College (now University) to a hastily-organized free-form debate on whether the moon landing marked the "end of science fiction." (What a crock.) But I think now that this was a meeting of the Woodchucks, the group that later got involved in the early Com-Con.

As I look back I realize Ron was trying to recruit me to enter the larger world of Fandom. If Tolkien wouldn't do it he was using science fiction as bait. After all, my "dirty little secret" as heir to the Grossmont Tolkien Club was that I had only read "The Hobbit" and the first half of "The Lord of the Rings." I'd tried several times, but I always got bogged down at the house of Tom Bombadil.

(Also, for those who asked, I never made it past falling asleep halfway through the first Peter Jackson Tolkien movie, and I was never able to finish "Bored of the Rings" either.)

On the other hand, I had read every bloody thing by Robert Heinlein I could find. I was an old school hard sci-fi kind of guy at that point. What I hadn't yet figured out is that sometimes it doesn't matter so much why you connect with people as that you connect with people.

That fall of 1969 Ron went off to college at Harvey Mudd in the Claremont Colleges. According to things I've subsequently read on the internet, you can map the five colleges in that group onto the five main characters in "Scooby Doo Where Are You?" thusly:

    -----------------------------------------------------------------
    Scooby-Doo                =  Harvey Mudd College
    Norville "Shaggy" Roberts =  Pomona College
    Freddie Jones             =  Claremont Men's College
    Daphne Bakers             =  Scripps College
    Velma Dinkley             =  Pitzer College
    -----------------------------------------------------------------

A bunch of us made a road trip to visit him at Mudd over Spring Break, 1970, but we were mostly unaware of his new connections with the Los Angeles area Tolkien clubs, including the Pomona Valley branch of the Mythopoeic Society, which called itself the "Desolation of Smaug" because of the poor air quality in eastern LA county.

EXA kickoff campout Saturday 26 July 1969 at Paso Pecacho Campground
L to R: Mr. Johnson, Rick J., Betty Spaeth, Ron, Nancy, ??, Robert, Sandee, Callie, Dike, John L
from the personal collection of Alan Scrivener

Simultaneously, I took over as "leader" of our social group, though some disputed my position. It seemed the group had drifted pretty far from Tolkien, or German for that matter, (at least that was my story -- Ron probably had a different view) and I had been working since the summer to reconstitute us as the "Experimental Arts Club" (EXA). A number of us had been exposed to the Dada school of art in the summer of '69,

including the ideas of "found art"

and "performance art,"

and we were exploring in this new direction.

The problem was we lacked a faculty sponsor. Both Ron and Marla had turned out to be better than me at getting over this hurdle. We had some EXA events that fall, but by spring the concept had dissolved and were no longer a club, just a group of friends. Meanwhile a school year (September to June) passed as we "did our thing" at Grossmont High and Ron did his at Harvey Mudd College, until he returned home for summer break.

According to the Mythopoeic Society's newsletter "MYTHPRINT" from August 1970, which Richard Alf provided me a copy of only this week:

    Ron Cearns of La Mesa ... did the leg work of organizing the
    San Diego Branch [of the Mythopoeic Society].  ... The formational
    meeting [was] on June 27th.  The second meeting was held on July
    11 at the home of Janice Gard, the branches acting secretary.

Whoever authored this unsigned article (Glen GoodKnight??) was at that first meeting. According to my journal, so was I (along with Carl, Loretta, John Zecherle and Mary Jones), and I left early, though I have no recollection of any of this.

Nevertheless, in July of 1970, the summer before my senior year, Ron convinced me to go with him to some sort of Tolkien event held at the Riverside Mission Inn in Riverside, California on July 25.

Somehow I managed to get out if there without picking up any literature that I recall, or even quite finding out what the event was or who put it on. I did really enjoy the Mission Inn. Someone described the architecture as "Martian Gothic." It was definitely enhanced by the sight of sword-wielding Orcs battling on the buttresses. (Rumor was that the hotel banned fantasy con events after that experience.) There was also a cute little garden where Dick and Pat Nixon got married, and a huge chair built just for the fat president William Howard Taft.

I seem to recall that I was too broke to dine at the evening banquet (I went to Jack in the Box instead) but afterwards I snuck in and joined a table. Ron was off "hob-knobbing with fellow wizards" (to quote the "Wizard of Oz" movie), so I was on my own. I met some very gracious people, mostly women, from the San Gabriel Valley chapter of the Mythopoeic Society, including Doris Robin, who sort of took me under her wing after I proved myself witty at passing notes.

There was some sort of fiery debate going from the main stage on about the future of the community and how vital it was to do this or that. I paid it no attention whatever. I think Ron was up there, but I was busy flirting with the "San Gabriel girls." I wish now I had at least managed to figure out where I was, but now I find that internet has not come to my rescue, and no amount of Googling has solved this mystery thus far. (Richard Alf of the Shel Dorf Tribute folks

says he and others have heard rumors of this event.)

Ron Cearns in the 1970 Comic-Con guide

According to the Comic-Con guide from 1970:

    The Mythopoeci Society ... will be holding a convention over
    Labor Day Weekend this year, at Santa Barbara.  Talk to RON CEARNS
    at the Comic-Con, or write to the Mythopoesic Society at Box etc...

But, in fact, Mythcon I was held September 4-7, 1970, at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California.

I know because I was there. Once again Ron Cearns was the one who convinced me to go, and he and I were the only folks in attendance from the original Grossmont High School Tolkien Club.

The Mythopoeic Society's newsletter "MYTHPRINT" from August 1970 gives this as the preliminary agenda for Mythcon I:

MYTHPRINT August 1970

According to the Comic-Con guide from 1970:

They followed it pretty closely. In addition to a number of rather academic papers and panels, there were:

• a reading from "The Wind in the Willows" passage "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" at dawn,
• a rousing game of "Capture the Ring" on a lawn,
• a pun competition billed as the "Punopoeic Tournament" (which my team won, even though the topic was the trilogy I hadn't read),
• an entertaining guest speaker, C. S. Kirby,
• an entertaining slate of movies, including a late-night screenings, of wonderful short films such as "Paddle to the Sea" as well as some features, including two from Tolkien's era:
  • "The Man Who Could Work Miracles" (1936)
    www.imdb.com/title/tt0029201
  • "The Lost Horizon" (1937)
    www.imdb.com/title/tt0029162

As with the Riverside mini-con, Ron wasn't around much, off hob-knobbing with fellow wizards, growing his social network (as we would call it today), so once again I found myself "adopted" by Doris Robin and two ladies with the nick-names "Punkin" and "Cow" who were among her minions. If they were here today I would thank them again.

There was a remarkable set of coincidences surrounding my visit to Mythcon I, involving a pretty girl named Allison, who I was trying to make time with ("chat up" as they say in the UK) when this guy named Michael Mielnik -- who I'd met once before at Ron's house when he was doing magic tricks -- swept in and took Allison away from me. Many years later I was MC-ing a talent show at Kresge College when I recognized the woman in the front row as Allison. She told me after the show that she and Mike became an item, and the relationship lasted for years, but had ended. Wow.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mielnik adopted the stage name Reverend Chumleigh (and also did fire-eating as "the Flaming Zuchinni"), and became part of a movement to reinvent street theater as "modern vaudeville" with an infusion of counter-culture aesthetics. One of the acts involved was called the Flying Karamazov Brothers, whose members included for a time ... (wait for it) ... Carl Spaeth, one of the Big Six, a founder of SOFOH, who changed his name to Thaddeus Spae and became what he always said he wanted to be: a wandering minstrel.

(The Flying Karamazov Brothers went on to fame and possibly fortune, appearing on "Seinfeld," long after both Spae and Chumleigh had been left behind.)

But in retrospect, I think the most significant event for me at Mythcon I was meeting a woman named Kristin at the costume competition, who was dressed as a shepherdess, carding wool and spinning it into thread as she wandered about, who taught me something that Ron hadn't yet been able to: that the lifestyle of Fandom (as we were already starting to call it) could be at times enchanting.

Were We the First?

This year some of us from those days who still stay in touch via Facebook got to wondering if perhaps SOFOH was the first Tolkien Convention in the world. A few things point against it. In a newsletter in Richard Alf's collection I saw mention of a Bilbo-Frodo picnic held in 1967. But does a picnic count as a Con? We had picnics too. Several on-line sources about Mythcon I say:

    Mythcon 1 was held in conjunction with Tolkien Conference III.

Remembering Our Founder

In early 1971 Eric and I were swimming in my pool one afternoon, discussing the movie "M*A*S*H" (1970)

and its scene of a "last supper" for "Painless" the dentist,

scene from M*A*S*H

in which the thirteen actors slowly assume the poses of Jesus and the apostles in da Vinci's "Last Supper."

The Last Supper

And we hatched a plan, to pose for a similar picture and buy an ad to place it in our senior yearbook.

The administration never quite figured out what we were up to. They complained of visible alcoholic beverages; we showed that they were all Dr. Pepper bottles. They said "EAT YOUR LIVER!" was obscene; we explained it was from the American literary classic, "Catch 22" (1961) by Joseph Heller,

and added a quote to establish the context. Finally they let it through, and it appeared thusly in the 1971 "El Recuerdo" yearbook:

ad from 1971 Grossmont yearbook

All of the thirteen of us posing are from the Grossmont High School class of 1971, but if you look above us, at the portrait to the right of the "ICE FOR SALE HERE" sign, you'll see "our founder" from the class of '69, Ronald Lynn Cearns.

(In a vaguely related note, in 2004 I was doing some research in the visualization of social networks, and needed some real social network data to use. I ended up taking the 13 seniors in that 1971 photo and mapping out all of the school clubs they were each in.

example social network visualization using high school clubs data

This work is documented in an article for a networking theory conference,

as well as a a blog entry

which is more of a layman's overview of the field of Network Theory.)

Ron passed away in the early 1980s; I wish I could remember when. Eric, Bruce, Marla and I went to his funeral. If I recall correctly, he's laid to rest in the Mount Hope Cemetery, which is also where detective fiction author Raymond Chandler is buried.

I got to thinking recently, if I were to asked to speak at a Ron Cearns memorial, what would I say?

I decided I would mention the concept of a "supernode" in Network Theory, which is a node that has many more than the average number of connections to other nodes, and is crucial in linking up different parts of a network. Then I would explain that Ron was definitely a supernode. (For more info on this, see the 2003 book "Six Degrees -- The Science of a Connected Age" by Duncan Watts.)

And I would definitely read the lyrics to the song "Are You Sitting Comfortably?" by Justin Hayward and Ray Thomas, from the 1969 Moody Blues Album On the Threshold of a Dream.

Take another sip my love and see what you will see,
A fleet of golden galleons, on a crystal sea.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Let Merlin cast his spell.

Ride along the winds of time and see where we have been,
The glorious age of Camelot, when Guinevere was Queen.
It all unfolds before your eyes
As Merlin casts his spell.

The seven wonders of the world he'll lay before your feet,
In far-off lands, on distant shores, so many friends to meet.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Let Merlin cast his spell.

Another Comic-Con pioneer, Shel Dorf, passed away in 2009. In another coincidence in this cluster, I received a Facebook message about SOFOH possibly being the first Tolkien convention, and less that two hours later I read the news of Shel Dorf's passing.

I should also mention the coincidence that lead to this article being written. I know Richard Alf through a roundabout series of friends of friends who have nothing to do with Tolkien or Comic-Con. To put it simply, we have a common interest in the mathematics of financial markets. One day our conversation somehow got on to the topic of Comic-Con, and Richard's role as a founder. It was in this conversation that the name Ron Cearns came up. It is only through conversations with Richard, and later with other Shel Dorf Tribute folks

that I have come to know about Ron's work as a Comic-Con founder. I just knew him as the person I have to thank for meeting most of my friends from high school, and for introducing me to Fandom.

I feel I should apologize for the fact that though I was witness to many seminal events in Comic-Con pre-history, I wasn't paying very close attention to most of it. In my defense, I didn't know this material was going to be on the exam, and I was paying attention to other things.

I hope I have vindicated myself with my skills as an archivist. Richard and I were talking about how the key is not only keeping all this old stuff but being able to find it later. It is primarily my skills at indexing that make me a good archivist. I'm glad to able to share this material with all of you, in the hope that it may trigger someone else's memories or a trip to the attic to retrieve keepsakes. (What ever happened to those costume photos from SOFOH, for example?)

Perhaps I can also look back across a lifetime of experience and provide some commentary. It seems to me now that when Ron wrote all those letters to high school English department heads he was reaching out, trying to find others like us. In our own ways we all were. We were part of a generation of thousands (who would later become millions) who were deliberately modulating our social networks to both discover and define them; creating and mapping what Fandom was and is all about. When Ron plugged into the Mythopoeic Society and Comic-Con he found the "mother lode" of both fans and fan organizers. And he never looked back.

Epilog: Finding Comic-Con

I continued to experience Fandom intermittently over the decades. I remained a fan of sci-fi in books, movies and TV. A college roommate took me to the "Star Trek" convention "Equicon" I" at the Los Angles Airport Hyatt over Spring break in 1973.

After I returned to San Diego in 1979 my wife and I attended our first Comic-Con at the El Cortez Hotel in the early 1980s. After an up-close drawing lesson from Trina Robbins, one of our favorite comic artists,

we took a breather and walked around the building, wandering through an open door just in time to see the marvelous short stop-action film "The Wizard of Speed and Time" (1979) by Mike Jitlov.

It was magical.

We also attended some meetings of the Star Trek Association for Revival (S.T.A.R.) in San Diego,

made to a WorldCon in Anaheim in 1996,

and managed to visit a few Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) meets and Renaissance Faires along the way.

But it was our participation in the computer graphics conference and organization SIGGRAPH

that got us to be Comic-Con regulars. Starting in 2003 we began getting a small press table -- later non-profit table -- to promote our San Diego professional chapter of SIGGRAPH at Comic-Con.

(Having a table is great; it serves as meeting place, communications center, resting place and locker for the volunteers.)

This is when I -- finally -- came to love Comic-Con. I suppose everyone has their pivotal moment; mine was seeing Patrick McNee

from the BBC TV show "The Avengers" in a panel about the DVD release of the show. That's when it sunk in that this was about more than comic books.

Today we have a teenage daughter who is a bonafide fangirl, who loves the movie "Fanboys" (2008),

(which we first learned of at Comic-Con), who embraces FIAWOL (Fandom Is A Way Of Life), who demanded we buy Comic-Con 2010 tickets a few minutes after they went on sale, and nearly fainted when we went to the "Annie" Awards (for animation) this year at UCLA

and she got to stand a few feet away from David X. Cohen, head writer for "Futurama"

who she recognized from his Comic-Con panels which appeared as special features on some of the DVDs.

And so it goes.

APPENDIX A - S.O.F.O.H. Mini-Con Attendees and Other Personages

Name	High School	Class	Big Six?	SOFOH?	Yearbook Photo?
Ron Cearns	Grossmont High School La Mesa, CA	1969	Y	Y	0.
Carl Spaeth (now Thaddeus Spae)	"	"	Y	Y
Barbara ("Barb") Banke	"	"	Y	N
Sherry Crabtree	"	"	Y	Y
Leslie ("Les") De Reimer	"	"	Y	N
Dicran ("Dic") Baron	"	"	Y	N
Sandra ("Sandee") Shepard	"	"	N	Y
Shelley Shapiro	"	"	N	N
Nancy Gooden	"	"	N	N
Robert ("Bob") Spaeth	"	1970	N	Y
Vally ("Val") Holloway (now Vally Colenso)	"	"	N	Y
Steven ("Steve") Petersen	"	"	N	Y
Wendi Wolcott	"	1971	N	N	1.
Robert ("Bob") Biddle	"	"	N	N	2.
Mollie Bigger	"	"	N	N	3.
Richard ("Rick") Johnson	"	"	N	N	4.
Graham Volker	"	"	N	N	5.
John Zecherle	"	"	N	N	6.
Loretta Hernandez (now Loretta Simonet)	"	"	N	Y	7.
Mary Jones	"	"	N	N	8.
Thomas ("Tom") Stanko	"	"	N	N	9.
Rouie Collins (now Ruai Crawford)	"	"	N	Y	10.
Eric Lighthart	"	"	N	Y	11.
Alan Scrivener	"	"	N	Y	12.
Wayne Holder	"	"	N	N	13.
Karen Holloway	"	"	N	Y
Brooks Clark	"	"	N	Y
Marla Anderson (now Marla Hicks)	"	"	N	N
Bruce Webster	"	"	N	Y
Robert ("Bob") Zawalnicki	"	"	N	N
James ("Jim") Whitaker	"	"	N	N
Laura Scrivener (now Laura Albert)	"	1972	N	Y
Diane Demers (now Diane Chen)	"	"	N	N??
David Demers	"	"	N	N??
Mr. Vincent	"	Faculty	N	Y
Bruce ("Baby") Botts	"	??	N	N
Judy __	??	??	N	Y
Dusty __	??	??	N	Y
Diane __ (*)	??	??	N	Y
David __ (*)	??	??	N	Y
Richard Tietjens	Granite Hills High School	??	N	Y
Terry Hope (??)	"	??	N	Y
Callie Bucaro	"	1970	N	Y
Andy Niemeir (sp??)	Coronado High School	??	N	Y
John Lee	Santa Ana High School	??	N	Y
Ralph Quizano	"	??	N	N
Richard ("Dike") Ray	"	??	N	N
Rick Anderson	"	??	N	N
Patti Willis	El Capitan?? High School	??	N	Y

(* - According to my notes a Diane and a David were at SOFOH. Siblings Diane and David Demers say it probably wasn't them.)

APPENDIX B - JOURNAL ENTRIES

Society of Friends of Hobbits (SOFOH) Mini-Con
March 28-30, 1969 at Grossmont High School & nearby

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, March 28, 1969
======================
Friday before Easter vacation
1:09 PM, during a biology test, news of Eisenhower's death came
in the library wrote a book review of Heinlein's "Stranger In a Strange Land"
walked home from school, went swimming,
Eric Lighthart's mom Lois gave me a ride to downtown Greyhound bus station,
where we picked up John Lee from Santa Ana, took my sister Laura home and
picked up my bongos, went to Eric's for KFC, then to Spaeth brothers' for
the S.O.F.O.H. Convention Dance
attendees included: Carl & Robert Spaeth and their mom Betty, me,
Eric Lighthart, Ron Cearns, Patti Willis (Rouie's cousin who I just met),
Richard Tietjens, Terry Hope (??), Sherry Crabtree, Sandee Shepard, John Lee,
Laura Scrivener, Karen Holloway, Rouie Collins, Dianne __, Brooks Clark,
Loretta Henandez, Steve Petersen, Vally Holloway (who gave me a ride home)
fogged in for awhile, listened to comedy records and Simon & Garfunkle

Saturday, March 29, 1969
========================
walked to Grossmont High School for Society of
Friends of Hobbits (SOFOH) Convention
had trouble finding it in the library building lecture hall
first session on Tolkien's Tengwar script
attendees included:
me, Ron Cearns, Rouie Collins, Loretta Henandez, Robert Spaeth, Patti Willis,
Mr. Vincent, Karen & Vally Holloway, Eric Lighthart, Terry Hope (??), Dianne __,
Judy __, Steve Petersen, Andy Niemeir (sp??) (the only new person) & Dave __.

Ron's for lunch
included me, Bobby __, Terry, Diane, Judy __, Andy, Dave & Ron
sent out for Jack-in-the-Box
Bobby took Diane home
made home-made shakes
went to my house for swimming
included Dave, Andy, Patti, Judy
decided Andy would stay with me
decided to have party that night at Steve's

Ron's for dinner in costume

photographer for costume party
Eric (ROMAN), Ron (SWAMI), Andy (SOLDIER), Robert (CONSTRUCTION WORKER),
Steve (JAPANESE), Terry, Rou, Karen, Dave, John

party at Steve's
Carl, Robert, Steve, Brooks, John jammed [i.e., improvised music on
rock instruments], Terry, Andy, (Patti and Rou absent)

Sunday, March 30, 1969
======================
Palm Sunday
Ron fetched Andy, I to church to teach Sunday School

convention picnic at El Monte Park
got lost at gas station, arrived late, greeted by Sherry and Dusty
had KFC, played boys vs. girls Frisbee keep-away
climbed a hill with Sherry, Eric & Rouie
upon our return E & R were teased because those back at the picnic
could see them making out on the hill

Eric's for dinner
with Laura, John, Sandee, Sherry, Eric (Rou left), and me

party at Terry's
[Callie Bucaro, an ex-girlfriend was there, and I recall a scene, left early]
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??? Mini-Con July 25, 1970 at Riverside Mission Inn

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sat. July 25, 1970
==================
Ron came, drove, got girl & guy,
slept on the way to
Riverside Mission Inn
wandered
took tour twice
ran about
wrote in garden
walked to Jack in the Box dinner
back to Inn
sat w/ Sam Gabriel gang
big meeting
Doris notes
Ron took us home
took Pam home
stayed up to 2
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MythCon I, Sep. 4-7, 1970 at Harvey Mudd College

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, September 4, 1970
=========================
flew to Ontario, Ron took me to Harvey Mudd College
Smorgasboard dinner
slides in Greeen Room
"Brides" in TV room ("7 Brides for 7 Brothers"??)
"The Man Who Could Work Miracles" (1936)
Platt Room
lounge - slept

Saturday, September 5, 1970
===========================
up in lounge
Glen awake
breakfast - eggs with Albertina, Doris, Karen
downstairs tuned in "Banana Splits"
got Doris from her room
movies: "Clay" and "Paddle to the Sea"
gave Doris "Sirens" [Vonnegut novel??]
Art Show with Doris
Glen's speech, talked Dada with Allison
Mike Mielnik joined chaotic discussion
lunch - torpedo sandwich with Doris & girls
Lounge - found Allison, downstairs, heard paper
Snack Room - slept till 6 PM
Dinner - chicken with Doris, "Fellini Movie"
Lounge - talked to Mike, Steve, Bonnie in, Glen prodded to
Green - heard music, provoked Karen
Down - heard Kilby, "Rainshower" "Lost Horizon"
joined wise teens
Doris' room - reconciled
Lounge - changed
Room - Cow in, slept

Sunday, September 6, 1970
=========================
rolled out of bed at 4:30 AM, slept on floor
went with Mike to sunrise reading of "Piper at the Gates of Dawn"
too sleepy, left
East Lounge, slept 'till 11:30 AM
Snack Room - wrote, lunch cheese sandwiches with Cow
Punkin told of Mormons
Room, Lawn with Doris, made signs, drew
Down for Lawlor speaker with Doris
Pool - (got suit) feet wet
Lawn - punopeic tournament
Room - dressed
dinner meat & potatos with Punkin and Cow
Lawn - played Capture the Ring
Room - put on beggar's costume [sackcloth]
Platt - ashes on, begged
Mess - costume ball (I won 2nd place for presentation)
Snack - waited, met Kristin (in shepherdess costume, spinning wool)
watched play
Lounge - slept on couch with blanket from Kristin

Monday, September 7, 1970
=========================
8:15 up, returned Kristin's blanket
breakfast with Doris & such, pancake
Carl & Pat Spaeth took me on a road trip to Monterey and San Francisco

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

APPENDIX C - unfinished parody of Tom Lehrer's "Who's Next?"

from the personal collection of Alan Scrivener

APPENDIX D - links

• "Comic-Convention Memories -- A venue for all your comic-convention memories, pictures, and praises"
  www.comicconmemories.com

• "Shel Dorf Tribute -- A tribute to Shel Dorf, founder of San Diego's Comic-Con International"
  www.sheldorftribute.com

• "Ken Krueger Tribute -- A Tribute to Ken Krueger, Chairman of Comic-Con International #1, member of First Fandom, beloved friend and mentor"
  www.kenkruegertribute.com

• July 22, 2009 Pittsburg Post-Gazette article: "Comic-Con founder recalls its humble, geeky beginning"
  www.post-gazette.com/pg/09203/985374-60.stm

Last update Tue Oct 13 08:14:39 PDT 2015 by ABS