Copyright © 2023 Rick and Ruth Coy
On this page we will talk about clubs that are no longer around. Things we were part of in the past. Since the only fan club I was in was Star Trek Federation of Fans, it will be the first we cover, now if you were in a Comic, SF, ST, SW or similar type club and have fond memories and pictures you like to share, just send them to us at rick@floridafandom.com
STAR TREK FEDERATION OF FANS
I believe it was late 1973 that I found out at work (I was working for WEAT-TV 12 in West Palm Beach) from Howard Goldberg, my supervisor, that a Star Trek club was holding a meeting at the West Palm Beach Library. (By this time Howard and I realized we had a lot of likes the same) He said he was thinking about going, and said it sounded fun to me. They said that they would be showing a movie, so Howard goes lets take an episode of Star Trek with us. So we go to the meeting and one of the fist people we meet is John Ellis, the president of the club. We were the hits of the night bringing the Star Trek episode. Joined the club that night - the name of the club was Star Trek Fans United. Joyce and Debbie were the other two officers of the club. I had been a fan of comics, SF, and ST for years, but had not been part of Fandom. John had made Fanzines and been to cons. And like me, he liked Comics and SF. Well shortly after joining one of the girls resigned as an officer and I became the sec/tres of the chapter.
STFU national had us making the newsletter, membership cards, and so on. (John is a good artist and very good at desk top publishing, so he knew how to make things that looked good) and not giving us anything for doing it, and wanted us to keep sending more and more money. We decided it would be better to do it on our own - and dues could be better spent on our chapter where we would like to see a return. So it was decided to form our own club - we found out from the Miami chapter they felt the same way - and with them we formed Star Trek Federation of Fans. We held a picnic in Fort Lauderdale for both chapters and we held our “forming’ meeting there. It was decided that West Palm Beach officers would also be who ran “Central” since we had already been doing
Most of the work in running a club for STFU.
I found out from John that there were monthly mini-cons in Miami run by G.B. Love and Jim Van Hise. I started going, and even selling comics there. But every so often we would get a table for the club there. (I think I started going to the cons before we changed to STFF) Usually it was to push the club or after we started having mini-con in WPB to let people know about them. The picture above me was at one of the Miami Mini Cons. Left to right: John, Rick, Debbie. At that con I believe we were selling Star Trek posters and things.
When we started our mini-cons in WPB we made sure they were not the same week as the Miami ones, which gave the fans two mini-cons in the month to go to. And the dealers at our con were the same ones as in Miami usually. These mini-cons didn’t have any guest and were held in one room with the dealers lining the walls and seats set up in front of a projection screen on which we showed old TV shows, serial chapters, SF movies and cartoons. At this time you could rent a lot of 16mm sound films from several different companies. You couldn’t charge money to see the movies, but they could be shown at an event that charged money to get in to. We held a couple in the salvation army in WPB, then we moved to the Polish-American club in Lake Worth, and finely ending up at a hotel on Palm Beach Lakes Blvd WPB. When we got to the hotel we had two rooms, one for the dealers and one for films.
Another type of event we would have was costume parties. They were a lot of fun and we held several. Because they were a money making even, they would be open to the public. One of them we got a lot of publicity from local TV before hand and had a huge crowd, but most of them only had members.
The club started growing - we started adding more and more chapters. We had most in Florida, but we also had them in other states. Total membership was getting close to a thousand members. Unlike STFU we only charged the chapters a single fee to become part of us. For this fee they would get a membership card template with their chapter name on it. A letterhead template with their name on it. And they would receive the news letter as a master. Then they could go out and have the items printed locally. In a few cases the ask us to have them printed we would but they had to pay for printing and a small fee for us doing it.(We wanted the fee to be high enough so the it would cost less for them to do it themselves). All chapters had to agree that people from other chapters could get into events they held at the members price. (At our mini-con it was something like $1 Non members 50¢ Members - and the Miami and other chapters members all got in at the members price.) We decided that since we were getting so big, we needed to hold major con, three days long with guest, panels, art show, films, costume contest - and instead of just doing a Star Trek con, we would do a multi-con! (We were one of the first to do this).
At this time I think I need to let you know how we were running the club. John who was president - took care on contacting Paramount (owner of Star Trek) He had the phone number of Susan Sckett Gene Roddenberry’s Executive assistant. And had a lot of other contacts dealing with his work on cons. Myself, as sec/tres did most of the commutations of the club. The VP did what ever else was needed to make things happen. The three of us were very busy and we had other club members who helped, but the club on the whole had no idea of what we did. This led to some problems - because I was the one who commutated with the club members - let some members to think I was running things and John was just a figurehead (like I said, they had no idea of what we did). I was approached by several members to have a coup, my response of outrage was not the response they expected, and it made a few members to split off and start their own club. This was ok, but their timing sucked - it was about four month before Trekon! The person doing it, had several other members thinking he knew what he was doing and could make a better club (He didn’t know what he was doing) And his biggest thing was trying to do what he could to hurt us - I have no idea why - we didn’t do anything to him, and to make it worse his best friend had just become VP of the club an in charge of audio visual at TREKON. Besides a humor fanzine that made fun of the officers of the club, he became more of a minor thorn in our side and by the time TREKON happened his New club disappeared. And the ones who had left the club were back.
