Historic Timeline (give or take a recollection)

Well, you asked for it...

A hazy history of the Greater Columbia Fantasy Costumers' Guild, Inc.
by Betsy Marks Delaney

"Why, it was just yesterday..."

No. No, it wasn't. It was actually...let's see...calculating...1984, some 35 years ago, give or take a month. And summer, besides. I had just met Carol Salemi, in my little college town of New Paltz, NY, and we were working on a Summer Rep production of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. I was in between my Junior and Senior year of college, working the shows for college credit and the thrill of living away from home for the entire summer. I was all of 20 at the time.

Carol was working with her friend, Aletta Vett, who was the costume designer for the show. Carol had her photo album with her in the costume shop, and she was showing the costume design professor (from whom I never once took a class on the way to my BA in technical theatre) photos of her work from science fiction conventions.

As it happens, I'd attended my first convention (Balticon 18) the previous Easter. It was an experience indelibly marked for a variety of reasons, none of which have anything to do with costuming, except for Carol's green dragon costume from the masquerade, which was the only thing I saw, having arrived late Friday night to the con.

My college roommate (the reason I attended Balticon at all) had made a huge fuss about Constellation (the 1983 World Con in Baltimore) and about hall costuming in general. She convinced me to come home with her at Spring Break and allowed me to dig into her costume trunk. I also had a small collection of second-hand costumes acquired from a recent costume shop yard sale. Together with Terilee's stash of garb, it was a respectable selection, but nothing prepared me for the caliber of costume I saw roaming the halls in the interval between presentations and awards.

That said, the concept of costuming beyond hall "dress up" was simply outside my frame of reference because I didn't *DO* costumes in college. Techies use power tools, not thread.

(Yes, I know better now. That was then.)

Fast forward to the following summer, and that photo album. It was total happen chance that I saw it when Carol was there. I don't know why I was in the costume shop, but like the raven I am, I was attracted to the pretty, sparkly things in the pictures, and when Carol landed on the dragon, I put two and two together.

Carol took me back to her postage-stamp-sized apartment and opened up the world of competition costuming to me. My life has never been the same.

Over the course of that last year at New Paltz, Carol and I became very good friends. My grades suffered a dramatic (heh) decline while I poured all my energy into cutting up huge paillettes to make fake jewels for the two costumes I constructed from my crappy Singer sewing machine and a lot of hand sewing, with Erté as inspiration. I dragooned my theatre friend, Thom Gomez, an acting student with whom I played D&D at college, and "Moon Rulers," my first ever novice entry, was born.

Carol worked on her "Arctic Sea" costume while I finished "Moon Rulers", and the three of us headed south to get to Hunt Valley in time for the masquerade.

That Friday night I met Diane and Jim Kovalcin, Ricky Dick, Doug Clayton, Jeannette Holloman and Ron Robinson, Sue "Who" (now Schroeder), Amanda Allen, and a bunch of other GCFCG members, including Marty and Bobby Gear.

I only have a couple of photos of the costumes I wore that weekend, but I still recall feeling way out of my league...until I won Best in Class, thanks to Carol's presentation suggestions while we drove like mad from New Paltz.

And that brings me to Costume-Con 3.

While we were at Balticon, Carol convinced me to pick up a membership to CC3. I believe, but could be wrong, that Sue "Who" sold me both my con membership and my membership to the GCFCG, which was newly formed as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, specifically designed to manage the funds from CC3.

I graduated in May, drove home with my dad, and a couple of weeks later, returned to New Paltz to go down to Baltimore with Carol. At least, that's how I remember it.

Just three short years later, I was working for Marty (at that point serving as VP of operations for K.L. Ginter & Associates, where I was working as Office Manager) when Marty had a (second?) heart attack and needed assistance with pushing paperwork around for the GCFCG in advance of the Annual Meeting that year. (Which is how I became GCFCG Corresponding Secretary.)

But I digress. I'll come back to this. I promise.

Costume-Con was an eye-opening experience. I met people at the con who I consider to be some of my closest friends, got to meet some living costume legends at the con, and at the end of it all, got to go to Marty and Bobby's house in Columbia for the first time, where the Dead Dog party was held after we vacated the Columbia Inn.

And that leads me to this institutional memory dump.

The party was on several levels in the house. While Carol and I hung out with folks in the living room, as Adrian Butterfield fitted me for a pillow case sloper, big things were happening upstairs. Last spring, at Costume-Con 36, I took an oral history from Janet Wilson Anderson, who filled in a lot of the gaps. Kevin Roche and Andy Trembley have copies of that set of recordings, so it's not a bad idea to review these recollections for accuracy.

Anyway, at that meeting: Janet Wilson (not yet Anderson), newly minted president of Costumers' Guild West/CGW, Kevin Roche (who originally designed the ICG logo we use today), Adrienne Martine-Barnes, Marty Gear, Karen (Schnaubelt) and Kelly Turner, and others. Marty Gear, and others, came up with the name, as a hat tip to the original name of North America (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_(name)). Hence "Greater Columbia." Shortly after the GCFCG launched, the single organization split into chapters (GCFCG, CGW, and Sick Pups), which all belonged to the GCFCG until the ICG incorporated.

You can find a teensy bit of this history recounted in the Genesis document on Costume-ConNections, but the real deal is that during the impromptu meeting, the GCFCG morphed from a one-off holding company on paper into what we now recognize as an international organization, now called the International Costumers' Guild. The original organization was comprised of three chapters: The GCFCG (Founders),the New York/New Jersey Costumers' Guild (Sick Pups), and Costumers' Guild West (CGW), all of which was known as the Greater Columbia Fantasy Costumers' Guild.

The Official (but not yet incorporated) name, The International Costumers' Guild, was still years away.

The GCFCG was the founding chapter, because it was created to manage CC3. (Karen and Kelly's "Fantasy Costumers' Guild" was merely a paper "name-only" organization, solely for managing the books for CCs 1 and 2.)

The GCFCG's existence--and unfortunately its bank account--were created at the same time Costume-Con 3 was born. The whole point of the GCFCG's incorporation was to provide a tax haven for supporting Costume-Con 3. Marty himself would tell you that. It's documented in the GCFCG's by-laws. It was one guild with multiple chapters, but local dues were mixed in with external chapter dues. Took a heap of work for Kathryn to straighten everything out, and when it was done, there were independent chapters which formed the ICG as a whole.

That the GCFCG continued after CC3 ended and grew large enough in scope to spawn the International Costumers' Guild, Inc. (with an entirely separate 501(c)(3) incorporation) is a testament to the people who were part of the original organization at the time. In part, the hell that "Ma Condon" went through was the process of extracting and separating the money related specifically to CC3 from the money that was local chapter-related from the money that was ICG-wide.

This flyer dates back to when we were still bidding for Costume-Con Fifteen, which took place in May, 1997. I designed the flyer, but the original document is lost to the mists of time. Unfortunately, the brochure was designed in WordPerfect and I don't have the software installed on this computer. I will need to rectify that if I want to open any of the historical documents I've got.

Is GCFCG the sole founder of ICG or was there other guilds involved?

The Greater Columbia Fantasy Costumers' Guild was founded by the folks who were in that upstairs room in Marty Gear's house after Costume-Con 3.

Separate incorporation of the ICG was started around the same time as CC7 (in 1989). Kathryn asked me to take on the role of Treasurer when the process was complete. Incorporation was finalized just before Chicon V (1991) per the minutes in Costumer's Quarterly. (See: Volume 5, Number 3 (Summer, 1992). See pp: 12-13, 11, and 7 in that order.)

Kathryn (Condon) Elms was the "international" GCFCG's last treasurer. She officially resigned at the end of the special Chicon V meeting, in 1991. I took over the ICG's books. Eventually, Sharon Landrum took over the role of GCFCG treasurer. I stayed ICG treasurer until just about a year before CCXV.

I remained GCFCG president until shortly after CCXV. I stepped down for reasons relating to the con, management, and with pressure from Dan Delaney, to whom I was married in 1997, as a result of his whining that I was overextended. I stepped away from the GCFCG for what in hindsight were stupid personal reasons related to Dan's contempt for my friends, which I've come to regret.

At any rate, in 1998 I shifted into the role of Costume-Con Archivist (revising and adapting the CCXV website that Ron Robinson originally designed into the Costume-ConNections site, which I maintained, scanning a gazillion photos and managing until CC26, when Dan's lack of support forced me to step away from that role, too).

At Costume-Con this year, I got Janet to give me an oral history of the founding. Kevin and Andy have those audio files and they're supposed to be working on making them available to the ICG for their archives.

So the deal is a lot less simple than it seems. The GCFCG was the both the founding chapter of the ICG and one of its first three chapters, but the GCFCG existed before the chapters did.

Think of CGW and Sick Pups as sub-chapters of the GCFCG, Inc. until they became official chapters of the ICG, Inc.

You get a snippet of all this history here:

http://www.costume-con.org/about-us/the-genesis-and-evolution-of-costume-con/

COSTUME-CON.ORG: The Genesis and Evolution of Costume-Con

Costume-Con and the ICG in general are co-dependent, and this history explains why. A similar document is supposed to be in the works for the ICG.

I’ve been told Costume-Con provides space for the annual ICG meeting but otherwise independent. We often have to remind people that the ICG does not run Costume-Con.

Exactly. The ConStitution outlines the relationship between the two.

The history seems to be scattered. As a relative newbie I find it hard to track some things down. I’m hoping more can be posted and maintained on the website.

I would love to be at the sit down to record/write the history. Chances are excellent that I have some of the details wrong. Many of the people who were responsible for organizing CC3 are dead. While I've got a long institutional memory, it still falls about a year short, because CC3 was my first Costume-Con. Adrienne, Marty, Bobby, Amanda, and for all intents and purposes Janet are unavailable now. Janet was at CC one day, and I just lucked out and shoved my phone in her face to record the story when I could.

It would be truly wise to sit the handful of us who were there near the beginning and get the details written down somewhere, now, before the resources disappear. Now that I have my weekends back again, if folks want to get together and knock out that history, let me know. Maybe it will kick Andy and Kevin into doing the rest of that work for the ICG website.

That list should include Ron, Don and Thomas, Sharon, me, and...probably Elaine Mami, Ricky Dick, Andy and Kevin. Oh, yeah, and Ma Elms! (If she's willing to talk about it at all. I think the extrication of the ICG from the GCFCG's financial books scarred her for life.)

If you have access to the original CostumApas, there's a LOT of history in those books. I believe the ICG has an electronic set. I have a nearly complete set of Costumer's Quarterly, and there's lots of history there, too.

My biggest regret: Since drafting this document, we've lost Jeannette, who could certainly have filled in some of these gaps. I'm sorry that an ugly divorce and years of underemployment have kept me away from my first Maryland family of choice.

Corrections more than welcome. Hugs to all.

Betsy's Brief Biography:

I moved to the Maryland area from Rochester, NY in the summer of 1986, a year and some change after graduation. I was already a GCFCG member when I became a Maryland resident. I joined the chapter to save money on my Costume-Con 3 membership, and I remained a member in good standing until shortly after 1997, when I dropped out of the ICG altogether (briefly). I've been an active member of the Silicon Web Costumers' Guild since approximately 1999. I served the GCFCG in every capacity except Vice President between 1988 and 1997, including both Recording and Corresponding Secretary.

At some point I also created the ICG Membership Directory, which was what I was working on when Marty had that heart attack, and I also founded the ICG Newsletter, now known as The International Costumer, where you may find additional history of this organization.

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Additional resources:

Costumer's Quarterly Vol 4, Number 4 (Fall 1991) Page 21 (continued on Page 12) President's Message from Janet Wilson Anderson contains an anniversary recollection of the history of the organization's founding. The decision to separate out and formalize the ICG as a separate entity was announced at CC7, but was not completed until some years later.

In fact, actual tax exempt status wasn't granted to the ICG until March 27, 1992, retroactively effective from 12/5/1991 through 12/31/1995, at which point the ICG had (I think) missed the deadline to achieve final status, and had to file retroactive paperwork to finalize the status as a 501(c)(3). Notice appears in CQ, Spring 1992 edition, Vol. 5, Number 2. (See above.)

I have a collection of Costumer's Quarterlies (nearly complete, that span from 1987 through Second Quarter, 2001. You are welcome to peruse them at your leisure from my house.