KSV News: Short Round 028

Collecting All Red Clay Magazines- The Saga

After Tommy’s passing, it was obvious that we had to do something to collect and preserve all of the Red Clay magazines ever produced. We owed that not only to Tommy and Rev Stubbe, but to every single editor and author who had a hand in creating them.

I guess we hoped that there would be an archive of all the Red Clay publications siting somewhere that we could easily access. We guessed WRONG.

We estimated that there had been hundreds of Red Clay publications produced over the years. But no one knew exactly how many. And of course, we found they had not been numbered consecutively like 1 through 100…. something easy.

Like all great ideas, the devil was in the implementation. It turns out there was no single source that had been cataloging and saving these publications. In the end, they would be spread out in the attics and basements of a bunch of our members.

So, the Red Clay hunt began.

Bill Ring took the lead and started the search by networking with KSV members that he knew. The process was much more complex than initially envisioned because there were not only Red Clay magazines, but newsletters and other publications from earlier years- before things got fancy and professional. We got lucky that our long term KSV member Jim Velcheck possessed the majority of the publications. Who knows where he had them stashed. And even better, Jim pretty much knew what KSV publications we had to find that he didn’t have.

Trust me, it was a frustrating exercise that was made worse by name changes of the publications over the years.

At the end of the day, we collected well over 100 publications that generally fell under the Red Clay banner from beginning to end. As well as some priceless articles by Reverend Ray. As best we could tell, we now had everything that needed to be preserved to honor the authors and the organization.

Then, the real work (to be detailed in follow up Short Rounds) began……..

Bob Koury: Website & Digital Manager