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Leah, Mike, & Knoxville Win Out
The proxy lead settled today’s election. From 39 proxies and 26 convention votes it was a wheel-in for President Leah Warner and Editor Mike Horvat.
Henry Jolly received Recorder post, Koelewyn won at Vice President, and Jackie Grissom started a third generation of the Moitoret dynasty, as Secretary.
More grizzly was haggling for Judges: Jack Bond, Gale Sheldon, and Tilly Haywood.
Wesson Oil Snares Convention $$
With cajolery and unsquelchable wit Auctioneer Sheldon Wesson stripped $260 from some 40 more or less eager participants in the annual benefit party redistributing tired type, typographic wotzits, books and brochures, unwanted ink & perhaps offcuts, and even an essential (every home needs one!) $3 nut tray.
Proceeds help start-up the next convention:
Lovecraft’s Florida Friend
by Jack Bond
Although the NAPA membership roster today shows a total of 18 members for Florida, back in 1933 when I joined there were only two of us.
The earliest Florida amateur journalist of note was Linden Dey of Jacksonville, who published a paper in the 1890s. Dey’s name disappeared from the Florida list in 1897 when he moved to Chicago and from the NAPA rolls entirely in 1915.
I’m not sure that an NAPA membership list showed a Floridian again until 1933 when my own name appeared as a Pensacola member along with that of Robert H. Barlow of DeLand. Barlow and I soon struck up a correspondence and I learned that he was a teenager like myself, living with his parents in DeLand, a small college town 20 miles inland from Daytona Beach.
Barlow was a precocious poetic type who had a small press on which he produced a paper titled Dragon Fly, a poorly printed effort made worse by his use of a gossamer, filmy paper. I published some of his work in my own Southern Amateur during this period.
Barlow became acquainted with H. P. Lovecraft through correspondence as early as 1931. By 1933 the Providence writer of weird tales, who was already becoming something of a cult figure, sponsored Barlow’s membership in the NAPA.
In early 1934 Barlow coaxed his friend Lovecraft down to DeLand for several enchanted weeks of rowing on the lake, picking berries and planting orange trees. Although the vacation in the Florida heat seemed to do the sickly Lovecraft a lot of good, later that year in Providence his health began to deteriorate.
In the summer of 1935 Lovecraft returned to DeLand and stayed with the Barlows for over three months. On this visit young Bob photographed his idol in what has become a classic Lovecraft likeness.
Meanwhile, Barlow and I continued our sporadic correspondence. He once sent me a handwritten Lovecraft letter as a souvenir; which regrettably has vanished.
Robert Barlow left Florida for good in 1936 following his parents’ divorce and his name disappeared from the NAPA list that year. Before leaving the state, however, he visited me in Pensacola for our only meeting. He was traveling by bus and stayed at the YMCA. He had dinner with us one evening during which he displayed his show-off habit of constantly spouting exotic poetry and other quotations. Needless to say, my family wondered what sort of odd birds I was picking up in this new hobby of mine.
Later that summer of 1936 he visited Lovecraft in Providence, whom he saw for the last time. Lovecraft succumbed to cancer in March 1937 at the age of 47, having named Barlow his literary executor. Bob gathered up Lovecraft’s manuscripts and letters soon after the funeral. He did nothing with them, however, and later relinquished them to August Derleth and Brown University.
Barlow later got a degree in archaeology in California and went to Mexico where he became an outstanding archaeologist and department head at Mexico City College. He died there in 1951 from an overdose of sedatives. He was 33.
Composed and printed at Panama City, Florida by Lowell Adams
History no Mystery in Times Past
Experience tells: Bernice McCarthy Spink was first elected NAPA secretary in 1940! She got hooked on ajay after folding papers for her uncle. Responding to a notice for information on the association, got back as samples of the very papers she had folded! And she has happily been with us ever since, despite early recruitment to official duty and staying up until after 1 a.m. at the 1940 Philadelphia convention where history further records that she held the convention cake on her lap (?) in Harold Segal’s room! Got that?
Some quotes never die, they just relocate to Washington State: from Willametta’s Walk One Flight of 1940: “Did you hear about the girl who joined the NAPA because she heard Ralph Babcock was a Great Necker?
Nacherl Disasters Dept
by Sheldon Wesson
The Tides Hotel has had its share of natural disasters recently. Two weeks ago a mini-hurricane and high water tore up the concrete, ruined a pool, killed off the power and phones. Now, just as they are recovering, comes the NAPA convention. What could we do to rival ravages of wind and water? Wait ‘til they see the white (!) wall behind this press!