Adventures in Organization Building: Adding Star Power to Futuring

After our first, quite successful conference, in 1971, when the World Future Society was five years old, my wife threw it out of the house. With new projects, new staff, and new visitors crowding our living space, things had gone too far. Finally, in the spring of 1972, Sally gave me an ultimatum. The Society had to go. The last straw came when staff members began using upstairs rooms while she was still in bed, depriving her of what little rest and privacy she still had.

We found some small office space in downtown Bethesda offered at an exceptionally low rent by a distressed landlord. We inspected the premises and immediately signed a lease.

The Society’s new premises were in a two-story red brick building, above a beauty parlor and a used-clothing store. To help furnish the offices, the Society’s pro bono lawyer, Bill Moore, donated three or four desks that he no longer needed for his law office, and we bought chairs at an auction of used furniture. Staff members contributed rugs and other items. So we soon had all the furniture we needed, and, for the first time, the Society took on the semblance of a serious enterprise.

Charles Williams, the Society’s vice president, inspected the premises and was quite impressed. Less impressed were visitors unfamiliar with our previous “headquarters.” They always expected something grander. But that didn’t bother us. We were proud and delighted with our new headquarters, especially the room we called the Members’ Lounge.

The Members’ Lounge had a large table plus chairs and bookshelves for displaying books about the future that visitors could buy. So it served as a small bookshop as well as a conference and reception room. To deal with book buyers and other visitors, we hired a recent widow named Julia Larson, who proved highly popular with visitors. When a blind member, Michael Esserman, came by to “see the books,” Julia made his visit so pleasant he came again and again. Once he brought his parents along, and we all had a nice chat together.

Next door to the Society’s new offices was a yoga parlor run by a German lady. Through the wall we could hear her disciples humming the Sanskrit holy word “Om” as they contemplated ultimate reality. Meanwhile, I had to contemplate a more urgent reality: How to pay the rent on our new offices.

The rent problem intensified some months later when the yoga lady vacated the space she was using and the landlord offered it to us. We did not need the space immediately, but we probably would within a year or two. Reluctantly, we decided we had to take it and immediately put it to some remunerative use if we could find one.