MediasharX: A Salute to Shirley Maiewski
A very delightful article about the Grandma of Star Trek -- Shirley Maiewski -- who passed away earlier this year at age 80.
I worked with Shirley for several years on the Star Trek Welcommittee (WAY before the advent of the internet). A delightful, fun, loving woman who was awesome in her love for Trek.
From MediasharX:
http://www.mediasharx.com/index.php/columns/2805
(Please follow the link for the complete article.)
Columns
Emotional Resonance & Rocket Launchers:
A Salute To STAR TREK: The First Generation
by Scott Nance
**snippity doo-dah**
Meanwhile, it’s not only the members of the famous original cast that continue to leave us. Folks behind the scenes, sadly, too, have been passing away -- including early fans of the show who kept a love for STAR TREK alive in the darker days of the 1970s. In those days, it was not at all a forgone conclusion this cancelled show would ever return. It was only the devotion and hard work of stalwart fans that kept TREK from passing on to the television graveyard.
Fans like Shirley Maiewski, who died earlier this year at the age of 80.
Known fondly to other fans worldwide as “Grandma Trek,” Shirley was a kind and friendly soul, and became one of those most responsible for creating the STAR TREK fandom from scratch.
This was fandom before the Internet. It’s easy to forget, but back then, you couldn’t just hop on to a PC to download fan fiction, learn about conventions, or really have any contact with other fans outside probably any you were lucky enough to just happen to know.
So Shirley, and her TREK friends Bjo Trimble and Jacqueline Lichtenberg, became an Internet of sorts for STAR TREK fans. Of course, their Internet ran not on phone lines and broadband connections, but on the U.S. Post Office and self-addressed-stamped-envelopes, or SASEs. Remember SASEs, anyone?
Shirley and the others opened an organization known as the Star Trek Welcommittee, which ran a mail room that served as kind of a central clearinghouse for fans. For a the cost of one of those SASEs, you could get catalogs of fanzines, directories of fan clubs and conventions, or just simply find another fan to be pen-pals with.
**snippity doo-dah**
The contributions of THE NEXT GENERATION, DEEP SPACE NINE, VOYAGER, and even ENTERPRISE, to the universe of TREK are very real and very valuable. But the TREK of today is a much more familiar, comfortable place than it was when Jimmy Doohan, Shirley Maiewski, and hundreds of other “old timers” both in front of and away from the cameras explored what was then the real “final frontier”--scifi TV. We will always be thankful for them.
|*|(*)|*|(*)|*|
Morjana
SG1-Spoilergate
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/SG1-Spoilergate/
Richard Dean Anderson Fans
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/rdandersonfans/
I worked with Shirley for several years on the Star Trek Welcommittee (WAY before the advent of the internet). A delightful, fun, loving woman who was awesome in her love for Trek.
From MediasharX:
http://www.mediasharx.com/index.php/columns/2805
(Please follow the link for the complete article.)
Columns
Emotional Resonance & Rocket Launchers:
A Salute To STAR TREK: The First Generation
by Scott Nance
**snippity doo-dah**
Meanwhile, it’s not only the members of the famous original cast that continue to leave us. Folks behind the scenes, sadly, too, have been passing away -- including early fans of the show who kept a love for STAR TREK alive in the darker days of the 1970s. In those days, it was not at all a forgone conclusion this cancelled show would ever return. It was only the devotion and hard work of stalwart fans that kept TREK from passing on to the television graveyard.
Fans like Shirley Maiewski, who died earlier this year at the age of 80.
Known fondly to other fans worldwide as “Grandma Trek,” Shirley was a kind and friendly soul, and became one of those most responsible for creating the STAR TREK fandom from scratch.
This was fandom before the Internet. It’s easy to forget, but back then, you couldn’t just hop on to a PC to download fan fiction, learn about conventions, or really have any contact with other fans outside probably any you were lucky enough to just happen to know.
So Shirley, and her TREK friends Bjo Trimble and Jacqueline Lichtenberg, became an Internet of sorts for STAR TREK fans. Of course, their Internet ran not on phone lines and broadband connections, but on the U.S. Post Office and self-addressed-stamped-envelopes, or SASEs. Remember SASEs, anyone?
Shirley and the others opened an organization known as the Star Trek Welcommittee, which ran a mail room that served as kind of a central clearinghouse for fans. For a the cost of one of those SASEs, you could get catalogs of fanzines, directories of fan clubs and conventions, or just simply find another fan to be pen-pals with.
**snippity doo-dah**
The contributions of THE NEXT GENERATION, DEEP SPACE NINE, VOYAGER, and even ENTERPRISE, to the universe of TREK are very real and very valuable. But the TREK of today is a much more familiar, comfortable place than it was when Jimmy Doohan, Shirley Maiewski, and hundreds of other “old timers” both in front of and away from the cameras explored what was then the real “final frontier”--scifi TV. We will always be thankful for them.
|*|(*)|*|(*)|*|
Morjana
SG1-Spoilergate
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/SG1-Spoilergate/
Richard Dean Anderson Fans
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/rdandersonfans/
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