The Society Starts a Book Service

During the Society’s early years, its mail came to a box at Washington’s Twentieth Street Post Office. There I would pick it up on my lunch hour and take it home, where I would open the envelopes and try to supply the sender with whatever was requested. Checks for membership would be delivered to Peter Zuckerman at our next Board of Directors meeting. He would deposit the checks in the bank and pay our suppliers — whenever there was enough in our account to meet their demands.

Printers’ trucks made deliveries of THE FUTURIST to the back door of my home, and I would store the copies wherever I could find space. To prepare mailings of THE FUTURIST to our members, my wife, Sally, would organize work parties that might consist of neighbors, Society members, and our children. One amusing incident I recall from this period was an envelope-stuffing contest between our four-year-old son, Blake, and Joseph F. Coates, a bearded chemist who was then working for the Defense Intelligence Agency. (I forget who won the contest.)

As membership continued to grow, addressing and mailing copies of THE FUTURIST to members became increasingly time-consuming. So I was overjoyed, early in 1967, to get an enthusiastic letter from a woman named Juanita Smith, who worked as a secretary for a psychiatrist only a block or two from my own office in downtown Washington. She asked if she could be of help to us. Could she ever!

I immediately arranged to lunch with her and found her very well organized and public spirited. Her job allowed her considerable free time, and she said she would be happy to help with the Society’s paperwork. I eagerly accepted her offer, and she became the Society’s first Membership Secretary. Juanita’s task was to process membership applications and type mailing labels for THE FUTURIST, greatly reducing the burden on Sally and me.

Juanita Smith soon moved to a new job working for the American Freedom from Hunger Foundation in the Matomic Building on H Street, where the Atomic Energy Commission was located. Juanita’s boss spent most of his time on the telephone trying to raise money, leaving Juanita largely free to work for the Society.

Meanwhile, I decided to experiment with selling books about the future, such as Arthur C. Clarke’s Profiles of the Future (1962), one of the best books I had read. So I ordered copies from the publisher and began offering them for sale through THE FUTURIST. Soon we were getting so many orders for Arthur’s book (as well as others) that book sales became a growing part of the Society’s operations. Since volunteers were doing the work, the book sales helped greatly to defray the cost of producing THE FUTURIST.

We gradually increased the number of books we offered for sale, and to help handle the orders, Juanita volunteered her husband, Walter Smith, a 77-year-old Englishman with an elegant white beard. The Smiths lived next to the post office, and Walter was retired, so he could provide extraordinarily swift service for Society members ordering books. As soon as an order was received, Walter would select the books, wrap them up, and take them immediately to the post office. As a result, our members got quicker service than any profit-making operation could provide, so more and more members began ordering books from the Society. One of our best customers turned out to be Arthur Clarke himself.