Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2002 - 64

exhibits were. I remember the fact that we were starting to look at that
nothing more than the expansion of the suites.
element of it, the product and design exhibits, and just the spirit of that
Interviewer: What else do you recall of the St. Louis conference?
conference. I think we went to the San Francisco Opera House and
PS: Well, the biggest thing was having Jo Mielziner as the keynote
some other spaces. It must have drawn maybe 200 or 300 people.
speaker. That was a real coup-Ed Peterson was the great mover in
Interviewer: San Francisco actually drew over 300.
helping to make that work. He was on the board and was sort of the
PS: Did it?
board liaison for our conference. And he was with Kleigl and we
Interviewer: Yes, it did quite well. I believe that it drew about 323 atwere part of his territory, so he could tie the two things together. We
tendees. You recall the exhibits?
tried to be pragmatic. For the program panels we came out to the
PS: Yes, I do. That was the first time for commercial exhibits that I reLoretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts and used their facilimember. Everyone was saying, "Look at all of that. Are we going too
ties. I think we had 250 attendees. We felt that was pretty good turn
commercial? What's it going to do to the august nature of the Instiout. St. Louis wasn't a magic city like San Francisco, but we had a
tute by having these exhibits and dealing with that?" At that point,
healthy attendance. The other thing I'm trying to remember, beknowing Chuck and Tom (Lemons) and being friends with Joel
cause I wasn't on the board at the time, was that there was some
Rubin, this was an important issue. Also one
of the things that happened during that convention was that they lost the site for the '73
conference. That's an interesting story. Going
into San Francisco we discovered they didn't
have a location for the '73 conference. Somebody had cancelled out-I forgot which city
cancelled. I am pretty sure it was Tom Lemons
and I who were talking when suddenly we said,
"Let's have it in St. Louis. We can do that." And
three days later, we were committed to it and
we had one year to arrange it. We got a hotel
Syracuse Scenery & Stage Lighting Co., Inc.;
down by the arch. And at the end of the anReflex Blue; p/u
nual meeting in San Francisco I said, "Come
next year to the largest McDonald's arch in
the country and we'll have a conference."
Interviewer: Tom was at Sylvania?
PS: Yes. How I knew Tom was through my dad who
also worked there. My dad had told me about
this smart-ass guy who had come in to develop
new products. So we sort of moved along together. I was eager to do things to show off St.
Louis. So when I said, "We'll host it in St. Louis
and do the '73 convention," the board-out of
sheer desperation-said, "here is someone
stupid enough to want to do it." And that is
how I got to chair the '73 conference.
Interviewer: Do you recall a cocktail party in St.
Louis?
PS: I remember going and the fact that they were
doing one, because that was part of the flavor
we tried to do in St. Louis. We tried to bring
the cocktails into the exhibit area to help promote that. The other segment of those conferences were the hospitality suites...
Interviewer: When did those start?
PS: Oh, those had started some time prior. Tom
and Sylvania were pushing the tungsten halogen line. And Kleigl was incredible in terms of
opening their suites. It was Joel's belief that
you must involve the young kids: "We need to
do this because the kids are the users of the
future." It occurs to me that the open bar was
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