Happily, many of the Society’s early members came to the rescue. Their enthusiasm was truly inspiring. One newcomer — who appeared on the scene at just the right moment — was William C. Moore, a talkative lawyer with many grand ideas. Moore agreed to be our legal counsel — a post he was to hold for years — and his guidance proved invaluable. One of his first tips was to incorporate the Society in the District of Columbia because its laws were favorable to nonprofit organizations. Our application did satisfy the District’s requirements, and we were duly chartered. Moore’s law office in the District of Columbia became the Society’s corporate address.
When the U.S. Patent Office refused our application for a trademark for THE FUTURIST, Moore told me to “go in and argue with them.” So I did, and we got our trademark. He gave me similar advice when the Internal Revenue Service rejected the Society’s initial application for recognition as a nonprofit tax-exempt charitable organization. Again, I defended the Society’s case and it worked. As a result, the Society got IRS approval, and we didn’t have to pay the thousands of dollars a lawyer would normally charge for the service.
Moore also found a volunteer artist for us — Roy Mason, an extraordinarily creative architect who had been trained at the Yale School of Design. Mason also proved to be a godsend. He had just established a design firm on the ground floor of an apartment building on Massachusetts Avenue just off Dupont Circle, and he had lots of associates whom he could call on as volunteers for Society projects. Mason was so incredibly passionate about his projects that he had no time for levity or laughter, and he had to struggle to express his inner visions in words. One of his charming habits was to confuse the words idea and ideal, so that he regularly said to me, “Let’s get together and share ideals!”
Mason’s first project for the Society was designing a logo in collaboration with his associate Kenneth Dresser. The logo incorporated the Society’s initials WFS into a background based on the Japanese tomoye symbol, which looks like three comets chasing each other’s tails. I was overjoyed to get the logo, since it made the Society seem like a well-established organization, and it was finished just in time for the first brochures describing the Society and inviting people to participate.
About the same time, I located another volunteer to help publish the brochure and later THE FUTURIST — Darold Powers, a tall, thin, rather dreamy writer from Iowa whom I had met while on a family camping trip. Powers had self-published a children’s book he had written, and in the process had learned something about publishing. When I sought his help, he was unemployed and depressed, but he sprang to life as I discussed the Society. Powers agreed to act as a printer’s agent, which meant that he would earn a commission if he found jobs for a printer or typesetter. The key point for me was that the Society would not be charged for Powers’s layout services, though we would have to pay for the typesetting and printing.
The membership brochures, using my text, Mason’s logo, and Powers’s layout, were printed on single sheets of heavy blue paper, and folded so they could be tucked easily into a coat pocket. Though very simple in design and execution, this brochure proved remarkably effective in recruiting members for the Society.
Powers also arranged to have type set for the first issue of THE FUTURIST and laid out the early issues by himself. His first choice of a printer proved unfortunate, however: The copies were so badly smudged that most of them could not be used. But after that near disaster, Powers located a printer who did excellent work for us.