"In the fall of 1953, I was getting ready to start high school in Columbus, Ohio. I had been the "new kid" during 8th grade and hadn't made any friends, so when I read a blurb in Galaxy magazine that the 11th World Science-Fiction Convention was to be held in Philadelphia over Labor Day weekend I decided that this was something that I just had to do.
[...]
"I was lurking in a corner (huddling might be a better term) when a tall, white-haired man came over and began to talk to me about what I liked to read. I had just bought a copy of Skylark of Valeron in the dealers' room (1949 Fantasy Press first edition with a dust jacket price of $3.00) and began enthusing about this "new" writer that I had just discovered, E.E. Smith, Ph.D.
"Just about that time a grandmotherly woman came over to us and the white-haired man turned to her and said, 'Mother, this is Martin Gear and he likes the books that you type.' He then turned to me, stuck out his hand and said, 'I didn't introduce myself, I'm 'Doc' Smith.' Before I could fade into the woodwork in embarrassment, the Smiths got on either side of me and escorted me around the convention, introducing me to other authors and artists. For the remainder of the weekend, whenever either of them saw me alone they made a point of checking to see if I was enjoying myself, and of somehow including me in whatever was going on. [...]"
-- Marty Gear (b. 1940, d. 2013-07-18)
He's going to be missed by a hell of a lot of people.
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