Our first program book cover by Sonia Hillios, an amazing artist who got her start doing our committee’s fanzines.

I was welcoming William Campbell, June Lockhart John DeLancie and about 1100 fans to Marriott’s Hunt Valley Inn for the first ever Farpoint convention. Actually, if memory serves, John arrived the morning of October 9th, and Bill and his lovely wife Tereza had arrived the previous night, and we had driven them to the Inner Harbor for dinner at their favorite local restaurant, The Chart House.

Farpoint had begun a year before, when OktoberTrek chair Sandy Zier-Teitler had confided in me that perhaps she didn’t want to hold a fourth OktoberTrek, even though it was a record-breakingly successful convention. Weekend sales clinched it–Sandy didn’t want to hold OktoberTrek 93; but, bless her, she was willing to let me take over her five-year contract with the hotel (at no small expense to herself.) I met with the committee and proposed a slimmed-down, lightweight convention that would return us to our small-town con roots, bring a single, fan favorite guest (George Takei), spend only $30,000, and meet its startup costs by selling lifetime memberships at $100 each.

We did bookmarks…

The committee talked me up to two guests (John DeLancie would be our co-headliner) and $45,000, a lot of money for a 20-something librarian to commit to backing. And they voted in an older, wiser fan, my mother-in-law Beverly Volker, as con chair. Continue reading →