One of the most arrogant things we did in late 1975 when we started planning a convention was to name it “ITHACON 1”.  Tim Gray and I were the co-chairmen.  I had attended a few science fiction conventions, so I knew what kind of convention I wanted.  And the Club was large at the time, so we could count on a lot of workers. 

​

We reserved the Greater Ithaca Activities Center, a retired school building that had been (slightly) converted for community use, because it had everything we were looking for.  The gym would be the dealers' room, there were two large rooms for panel discussions, there was a sizable classroom that would hold the art display, and there was a back room that would serve as convention headquarters.  One difficulty with the location was that there was no place nearby to buy lunch, so we decided to have a concession stand in the hallway selling hotdogs, chips, and beverages. 

​

I won't belabor the points covered by Mike Costello and Carmela Merlo in their articles that follow.  But I will point out that we got really a lot of direct support from family and friends who were not comic book fans but pitched in to help out. Tim's sister and brother-in-law, Kathy and Paul Hildreth, did a lot.  My friend Scott Hazel took Friday and Monday off from work and came up from the Philadelphia area to help move furniture before and after the show, then helped with the admissions table during the show.  This established a pattern that Scott and another friend, Charlie Spiegel, followed for years. 

​

One difficulty with organizing a comic book show was that we didn't actually know anybody involved in the industry!  We wrote to Ben Pondexter of the Pittsburgh Comic Club, who had already run a convention, and asked for help with contacting guests.  Ben gave us several addresses, as well as beginning an exchange of Club newsletters that continued for years.  One of my own favorites among the people for whom Ben could supply addresses was Walt Simonson, whose work I greatly admired.  Walt was unable to make it, but kindly offered to talk to his friend Al Milgrom for us.  At a Club meeting, we discussed the possibilities, and the consensus was that we liked Al's work, and so Al became our first guest artist.  Al later asked me how we decided to invite him, and I honestly told him that we had a show of hands at a Club meeting on whose work we liked best, and Al won.  Al found this quite flattering, as he was in the very early stages of his career. 

​

Len Wein also accepted our invitation, and we were off and running!  We also invited fan artist Tim Corrigan, who lived in Rochester, and local artist L. Bruce Holman.  Tim was very pleased to accept, and Bruce gave us a lot of support in the form of artwork and publicity. 

We invited cartoonist Johnny Hart, who lived in Endicott, as well, but he was unable to attend.  However, he expressed his support and sent us a piece of artwork which we used in the program book. 

​

In addition to having a convention, I wanted a big program book.  We spent a huge amount of time on this, selling ads in the book to cover the cost of printing it, writing articles, and preparing everything.  There were no computers or word processing at the time, so everything was painstakingly done by hand using typewriters, Zip-a-Tone, and press-apply lettering.  Nobody who has never done it could possibly believe how much labor goes into preparing a book with those tools!  Of course, all of our publicity materials were prepared in the same way.  Tim and I even created a letterhead which we used for all correspondence.  We printed PLENTY of copies of the program book, and there are still some left over! 

​

A popular program activity at that first convention was the plotting of an issue of the Hulk, which Len was writing, with audience participation.  It was hoped that this would actually be a published story, but that never materialized. 

​

Another program activity was the auction.  For many years, the ITHACON auctions were very well received, and a lot of unusual and interesting material changed owners.  The highlight of the ITHACON 1 auction was Club member Bill Silvia's Amazing Spider-Man #1 in about Fine condition.  This item had a minimum bid of $65., and sold for $85.  I consigned a copy of Tales of Suspense #39 in VG condition, and that sold for $46. 

​

We also had a film program.  This was of course before video, so these were actual 16mm films that we were able to borrow from a collector in Tully, NY. 

By the time the convention actually arrived, I was so tired and stressed out that I never really remembered it all that clearly.  I hadn't really slept in a week.  In addition to organizing the convention, I was set up as a dealer (meaning that my wife Lisa actually ran the table during the show). 

All this was done for a one-day show.  It was successful enough that even as the show ended, we were talking about expanding to a 2-day show the following year...