Tag Archives: John Trimble

Trimbles Are Westercon 66 Special Guests

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Bjo and John Trimble will be attending Westercon 66 as Special Costume guests. This is a great move —

They were there at the beginning of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and helped bring the arts to sf cons…

Bjo introduced art shows to science fiction conventions, and put on some of the earliest costume shows, which evolved into today’s masquerades. She and John were key players in Star Trek fandom, helping keep the original series on the air when it was first under threat of cancellation. They have been active in fandom ever since.

Bjo Comments on Final Flight of Enterprise

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Leonard Nimoy welcomed the shuttle Enterprise to Kennedy Airport in New York last month, symbolizing Star Trek’s shared history with America’s first space shuttle.

He and the rest of the cast had attended the shuttle’s roll-out 35 years earlier — because a letter-writing campaign spearheaded by Bjo Trimble influenced President Gerald Ford to name the first shuttle after the starship on Star Trek (itself named by Roddenberry after the famous U.S. Navy carrier).

Bjo and John Trimble went to the 1976 roll-out, too, so I naturally wondered what they were thinking as everything came full-circle. Bjo answers —  

It does seem like a blink since we worked on it, though revisionist history now says we had nothing to do with it, and several others are claiming they did it all alone. Yeah….

It was with a sort of nostalgic sigh that John and I sat down to watch the Enterprise being delivered to New York. We could wish that it had been brought out here, but at least it didn’t end up in a space junk-pile, as so many of our past space vehicles have done.

Well, maybe not a junk-pile, but it’s heart-rending to see that big ol’ Saturn 5 laying on the Johnson Space Center’s lawn, just being a big bird’s nest!

At least the Enterprise will be set up for people to wonder at it, and enjoy it. That is important to us.

LASFS Cuts the Birthday Cake

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The Los Angeles chapter of the Science Fiction League (No. 4) began meeting in 14-year-old Roy Test Jr.’s family garage in 1934. On October 28, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society celebrated 70 years of friendship and fanac. Founding member Forrest J Ackerman performed the duty of gaveling the 3,507th meeting to order with President Van Wagner’s pink plastic lobster.

For Ackerman, Len and June Moffatt, this was their second consecutive day of celebration. A group of eofans gathered on October 27, the real anniversary, at their old stomping grounds, Clifton’s Cafeteria in downtown LA. Local TV news covered the get-together because it also included those teenaged fans who grew up to have stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen.

The October 28 club meeting drew around a hundred fans, about evenly divided between the usual crowd of active members and old-timers from bygone decades. The more widely-known regulars included John Hertz, Joe Minne (who introduced me to LASFS), Rick Foss, Matthew Tepper, Elayne Pelz, Drew Sanders, Charles Lee Jackson 2, Marc Schirmeister, Marty Massoglia, Christian McGuire (L.A.con IV chair), Francis Hamit, Leigh Strother-Vien, Ed Green, Liz Mortensen, John DeChancie, Marty Cantor, Tadao Tomomatsu (“Mr. Shake Hands Man”) and Mike Donahue. Some of the graybeards present were notables in national fandom back in the day, like Arthur J. Cox, and others remain well-known, like Fred Patten, John Trimble, William Ellern, Dwain Kaiser and Don Fitch.