Tag Archives: Curt Phillips

Another TAFF Candidate Announces

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Randy Smith has entered the 2014 TAFF race. On his Facebook page he posted “I am informed by the TAFF administrators that my name will appear on the ballot for 2014. Many thanks to my nominators: Christoper J Garcia, Kevin Standlee, Mark Olson, Colin Harris, and Pat McMurray!”

This makes a three-way race, Curt Phillips and Brad and Cindy Foster having announced a few weeks ago. The nominating deadline is December 31, leaving open the possibility one or two more fans may decide to vie for the trip to the 2014 Worldcon in London.

[Thanks to Chris Garcia for the story.]

Phillips: Dave Locke (1944-2012)

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Long time fannish friends Dave Locke (L) and David Hulan (R), taken September 30, 2012 at Locke’s home in Vermont. Photo credit: David Hulan

By Curt Phillips: Dave Locke passed away over the weekend. His son Brian stopped by Dave’s house earlier today after returning from an out of town trip and found him earlier today. Dave had suffered from serious heart troubles for year and had a heart attack a few years ago. His long time friend David Hulan – who’d visted Dave at his home in Pownell, VT exactly one month ago to the day, was called by Brian a short time ago, and Hulan broke the news to the rest of us on the Southern Fandom Classic discussion Group on YaHoo – of which Dave had been a member and a moderator.

I only met Dave Locke once; at a Midwestcon several years ago. But as often happens in Fandom, we quickly became fast friends and I felt that we both knew each other very well through our fanzine writing and our extensive private correspondence. I’m going to miss that friendship for the rest of my life. In spite of the fact that I’m one of the laziest fanwriters in all Fandom, Dave somehow managed to talk me into writing a semi-regular column for his on-line fanzine Time and Again. That ranks as no small feat and I’ll always be grateful to him that he did twist my arm over those articles. Somehow he knew I’d enjoy having written them after I got off my butt and actually wrote them, and Dave gave me as fine a showcase any fanwriter could ask for in T&A.

Dave Locke was one of those folks we rarely meet in life; He knew how to cut through the nonsense most of us clutter our lives up with and he could do that in just about any situation. He knew how to connect with a new friend instantly. He was witty, sardonic, analytically critical – yet he could find the proper context for any discussion. And he was intelligent. Vastly intelligent. He was also a kind man. Intolerant of fools and scoundrels, yet endlessly tolerant, helpful, and understanding of the shortcomings of any honest friend. He was a damn good friend to have your corner. I’m glad he was in mine for a time.

Dave, I wish we’d had a thousand face-to-face conversations at a thousand convention fan lounges instead of just that one at Midwestcon, but I’m glad we did have that day. It was a very good day.

Beam Follow-Up

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Ray Beam at First Fandom Awards in 2000. (Photo by Keith Stokes.)

Curt Phillips adds these words of appreciation for the late Ray Beam:

I’ve just learned of the death of Ray Beam of Kokomo, Indiana on April 8.  Ray was a long time SF fan, a member of First Fandom, a regular at many midwestern conventions including MidWestCon and Pulpcon, and a fixture in old-time Cincinatti Fandom.  I knew him as a very pleasant fellow and enjoyed some great conversations with him about Fandom and old science fiction over the years.

The funeral home’s memorial page for Ray says in part:

Ray Edgar Beam Jr., 79, Kokomo, died at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, April 8, 2012 at St. Joseph Hospital emergency room.  He was born December 24, 1932 in Warren, Ohio, the son of Ray E. and Evelyn (Joseph) Beam Sr.  On September 13, 1975, he married Mary Ann Armfield.

Ray grew up in Plymouth, before moving to Indianapolis to live with his father.  He graduated from Arsenal Tech High School and attended Butler University School of Pharmacy.  He worked at Mallory Metallurgical as a Powder Metallurgist, where he earned many patents.  He was a 50 year member of the Greentown Masonic Lodge F&AM 341.  He was also a member of the Scottish Rite, Shrine Club and Grotto.

He was a life-long science fiction fan.  He won the Science Fiction Hall of Fame Award and the Sam Moskowitz Archive Award. In addition he was former Guest of Honor at several conventions. His favorite outdoor activities included cave exploring and Indy Car Racing.

Ray is survived by his first wife, Susie Rivers of Brownsburg; second wife, Mary Ann Beam of Kokomo; children, John Wesley (Debbie) Beam, Christopher Ray Beam, Wesley Daniel Beam , all of Kokomo, Catherine Turner of Franklin; eight grandchildren; 12 great-grandchildren.  He was preceded in death by his parents; infant daughter and elder daughter, Nancy.

New Bid for 2014 DSC

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Curt Phillips, Gary Robe and Warren Buff are the central committee of a new bid to hold the 2014 DeepSouthCon.

They’re currently considering facilities in Kingsport, TN, Johnson City, TN and Bristol, VA.  If selected, they’ll name their convention ConTrails

The bid will be submitted at DSC 50 in Huntsville next year.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Phillips: Who Wants To Be On The Radio?
Curt Phillips Announces Open Auditions

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By Curt Phillips: As those who know me best are all too aware, I’m hosting a radio show every Friday evening this summer on WEHC-FM, the public radio station of Emory & Henry College in Emory, VA. So far, that show has been called “Class of ’77” and has featured classic rock or other music that I felt like playing — such as the Seattle band ThorNton Creek, who sent me some fantastic review CDs recently. I’ll be playing them heavily on my August 5th show and you should all tune in for that because it’s one of those great bands that no one’s discovered yet.  Check their website at www.thorntoncreek.com and you’ll see what I mean.

My Friday night show will come to an end in September and so for my final show I’m throwing the airwaves open to any music makers or creators of audio wonders within the sound of this e-mail. If you are a musician (and I define that term loosely) and you’d like a chance to be heard on a radio station with a potential world-wide audience (via our streaming audio broadcast on the world-wide web), send me your recordings. If you know a good band or musician that would like a little exposure, send them this note and suggest that they send me their recordings.

Now, I’m only distributing this initial announcement within Fandom (if you’re part of it you know who I mean) and a very few select friends simply because I want to start it that way, but each of *you* may forward this announcement to anyone or anywhere you like. I trust you. You have generally good taste. Go forth, spread the word, and make me proud… I admit that I’ll listen a little closer to anything sent to me by a known fan or someone I recognize (and yes,  I’d love to get enough good material to make an all-fannish show), but I’ll try to listen to every submission I receive and give it a fair hearing. If I get over whelmed, know that I’ll try to do my best. I can’t promise personal responses to each submission, but I’ll try to do that too.

You can send your CDs (sorry, no tapes), or vinyl records to me at the mailing address below. I prefer CDs (and CD-Rs are fine, by the way), but if you want to e-mail me an audio file I can accept it but I’ll have to run it through virus software before I can even listen to it and if time grows short, guess which format will go unlistened to first? If you want your cd’s returned I’ll be glad to do so IF YOU ENCLOSE a stamped, self-addressed mailer to return them with. Otherwise I’ll not be able to return them, sorry.

All submissions should either be licensed through BMI or ASCAP, or should otherwise be your own work. Your submission of the material shall be considered to be your release to Curt Phillips and/or WEHC-FM to air that material with no compensation. All submissions must be identified by title and name of artist as you prefer, and a little background information on the material and artist would be good to have too. I’ll probably quote such material in my on-air introductions. All submissions should be air-play ready and should comply with all requirements and restrictions of the Federal Communications Commission. In other words, no bad language and no plagiarized material. If you sample, please identify the sources.

The station is WEHC-FM, 90.7 Emory, Virginia, USA, and the live audio stream can be heard at http://www.ehc.edu/wehc . Click on the “Listen Live” link at the top of the page. My show is heard every Friday night through this summer from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard time and I invite you to listen in. And also to my Old Time Radio drama and Big Band music show every Sunday afternoon from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. on the same station.

I’ll consider any submission in any length (but remember, this is a 90 min. show), genre or style. All the material has to do is impress me. The deadline is Friday, Sept. 2, 2011. And Sept. 2, 2011 at 7:30 p.m. is when this one-time show will air. Any questions? Ask me. Otherwise, ready, set, go…

Curt Phillips
19310 Pleasant View Dr.
Abingdon, VA 24211
USA

E-mail: Absarka_prime (at) comcast (dot) net

Does Curt Phillips Collect Australians?

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Australian fan Nick Falkner (from Adelaide) is currently attending a series of Computer Science conferences in the US (in the real world, Nick is aka: Dr. Nick Falkner of the School of Computer Science at the University of Adelaide) and will be making a flying visit to see family and friends in Abingdon, Virginia on Sunday, November 1 while en route to yet another Computer Science conference in North Carolina.

What makes this event fannish is that one of the above-mentioned friends will be American fan Curt Phillips, who has a stack of American SF magazines to send Nick home with. 

Nick will be the *fourth* Australian fan to visit Curt in 2009, following Melbourne fan Clare McDonald’s surprise visit to Pulpfest in June (while on her way to the Worldcon in Montreal), and Damien Warman & Juliette Woods of Adelaide who attended Corflu Zed last March in Seattle where Curt was the “Corflu 50 Fan Fund” delegate. 

Curt reports that he completely approves of this trend and is looking forward to seeing which traveling Australian fan drops by for Christmas. 

[Thanks to Curt Phillips for contributing this post.]

Update 10/31/2009: Corrected name per comment.

Corflu Fifty Picks Curt Phillips

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Rich Coad has announced Curt Phillips is the winner of the Corflu Fifty fan fund, wrote Randy Byers on the Trufen list. The fund will allow Phillips to go Corflu Zed in Seattle next year.

You can learn some more about Curt from this autobiographical bit on his website. He has an array of interests, the most dramatic being his participation in historical re-enactments. Click on the link to see Curt in uniform with the 30th Infantry Division at the 1998 Battle of the Bulge re-enactment.

Rich Coad told how the fund got started, in Vegas Fandom Weekly #98:

The Corflu Award is an outgrowth of the successful oneoff funds to bring Bruce Gillespie and William Breiding to Corflu Titanium in 2004 and to bring Harry Bell to Corflu Quire in 2006…. Andy Porter came up with the excellent suggestion of getting a group of fifty fans, each willing to donate 25 dollars or 15 pounds, to be the fund-raisers.

The Corflu Fifty supported Steve and Elaine Stiles’ trip to Corflu Silver in Las Vegas this year. And as Randy Byers says, the name Corflu Fifty reflects how many contributors they want to have, versus the 25 they already have. Interested fans can contact Rich Coad at richcoad @comcast.net [remove the extra space].

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

More About Tennessee Church Shooting

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Friends of the fans present at Sunday’s Knoxville church shooting have e-mailed more news about the incident.

Curt Phillips posted this information to the Trufen list:

More details are being posted to the KASFA list today. At least 5 people in that church were directly connected to Knoxville area fandom. The 5 I know of were all sitting together in a pew directly in front of one of the critically injured people. The son of one of KASFA’s main organizers was running late Sunday morning and he and his girlfriend arrived at the church just about the time that the first police car screamed to a halt in the parking lot.

Jerry Page copied the following message by Debbie Hughes to a Southern fandom listserv:

Our close friends Jamie Parkey, Amy Broyles and their children were there, Chloie Airoldi the mom of Jamie was there and Amira Parkey – Daughter of Jamie and the late Maia Plasil was there as well. None of them were hurt. Jamie was also one of the men who wrestled the gunman to the ground after he shoved his mom and his middle daughter under the pew. Amy was in the crying room with her youngest daughter and was shielded by glass from most of the gunfire.

Debbie Hughes commends this New York Times article about the shooting for its accuracy.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Curt Phillips, Jerry Page and Debbie Hughes.]

Fans Present at TN Church Shooting

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A gunman opened fire at a church youth performance Sunday, July 27, killing two people. Seven adults were also injured but no children were harmed at the Knoxville, TN church.

Curt Phillips told the Trufen list:

Present in the church was my friend Chloie Airoldi; long time Knoxville fan and an organizer of both the Knoxville Area Science Fiction Association and Knoxville former convention, ConCat; and the son of Knoxville fan and KASFA member JaNell Golden. Both are reported to be uninjured.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter and Curt Phillips.]