Old News: More news on Deltagrams

On Sunday at EVOC: I got a call out of the blue. Cellular reception there is sketchy at best, but I caught the phrase “My grandfather drew the Deltagram artwork posted on your web site….”

That caught my attention. His name was Mike Homes, from Houston Region. His grandfather was Leon Johnson, whose signature I’d been seeing on these old Deltagram covers. This artwork is exquisite, and I’d assumed that he was a professional artist who was doing work for SCCA, and Delta Region was licensing his work for the Deltagram. Not so, Leon Johnson was a Delta member and the artwork was drawn for the Deltgram.

Mike came across the site while looking for information on the Southwest Solo Divisional scheduled for April at EVOC. Stumbling on the old Deltagrams, he recognized his grandfather’s artwork. Mike’s parents are Eldredge and Janet Homes (maiden name, Johnson; Leon’s daughter).

I promised him the next Deltagram I scan and post would have a Leon Johnson cover. I picked the April, 1970 issue out and scanned it. It’s a bit damaged, but like a dented fender, it lends some character. I also scanned the cover in at a higher resolution (300dpi instead of 150dpi) so we could start a little collection of Leon Johnson covers. This particular cover, is actually framed on the wall in the Johnson loft.

Click to see that issue.

Mike is going to visit his parents in Kentwood, LA this Easter (2008), and I’m going to put up an full inventory of all the Deltagrams I got from Paul Johnson in case his parents have any of the issues that I’m missing. I hope to have more old issues and stories online by then so maybe they can help fill in the details.

This is precisely the kind of response I was looking for by putting up these old Deltagrams. From my first post about it, it was just 5 days before Mike Holmes contacted me. This only reinforces how important it is to continue this project.

I’m going to purchase some magazine and comic book sleeves to keep all the old Deltagrams in, and get them organized by date. I’ll also purchase a box to keep them all in, so whoever inherits the club after me can maintain a part of the Club’s history.

Would you like to help? I’m glad you asked that. Having scans of the pages online is definitely nice, but it would even cooler if the contents were transcribed and posted. Once that happens, the words are indexed and searchable, and can be googled. I’ve already begun some of this, with the April 1964 issue. I ran a page through Adobe Acrobat’s OCR engine. It completely butchered the text, but I was still able to correct it and paste it into the post. The result? The RE Report from April 1964 is online, some 44 years later. So are the 1964 Board of Directors of Delta Region. While that may not sound interesting to you, someone out there, like Mike Homes, might find a relative in there some where.

So if you are interested in helping, you can. Take the text from a posted page, type or OCR it into an email, and send it to me. If you want to do this regularly, I can set you up as a Commenter on our web site, where you can add comments to the bottom of our posts (a Wordpress feature). For the most part, this isn’t being used. All the comments are moderated (needing approval) and you need to be a registered user (which can only be done manually by an Admin). I can add you as a Commenter, and you can add the transcribed newsletter content into the post. Eventually, I’ll get the content into the post, and credit you for your help. I know it’s a tedious task, but that’s exactly why I’m asking people to help.

Stay tuned, as this story gets more and more interesting.

-Benson Young, 2008 Regional Executive, Delta Region SCCA