Dan Yoshimoto wrote:
 
ANY PEOPLE OUT THERE,
       Do any of you Conch-Lers have a list of the Shell Clubs with
pins? My wife and several friends from Pacific Shell Club are collecting
to make a display for a possible upcoming shell show.  Also a contact in
Belgium is doing the same. . .
 
Dear Dan and other Conch-L'rs:
 
Collecting shell club pins is an interesting aside for conchologists,
and those who come to COA can choose from many clubs who each year bring
their pins, tee-shirts and other club paraphenalia, including COA
material.  Don Young, Past President of the COA, did an award winning
display a few years ago of Clubs and their pins.
 
When you get a listing please post that on conch-l, as this would be the
most efficient way to disseminate a combined list.
 
You find all sorts of intersting things about your club you may not have
known.  My own first shell club, The Greater St. Louis Shell Club, has a
pin with our club shell Lambis violacea.  After all the original members
of the St. Louis Club had passed on, I asked Vi and Charlie Hertweck,
long time members of the club why that shell was chosen.  The answer was
as simple as they wanted a distinctive, large and colorful shell, and
the Lambis was chosen.  During the time when I lived in Louisville and
was in the (now in hiatus) Louisville Conchological Society (LCS) which
for anagram(?) folks will recognize those initials are the same as your
capable and long suffering COA American Conchologist editor, Lynn C.
Scheu, member of LCS (the club).  Our pin was a very rare volva type
named for one of the brothers of then LCS club member and Louisville
resident, Donald Dan.  Letters would come into the Louisville and St.
Louis clubs, and I am sure all the others, asking for a club pin and a
donation of the club shell!  In St. Louis we would respond indicating
the price of the pin and saying the club shell could be found on some
dealer lists, and at Louisville, I'm sure the answer was the shell was
just unobtainable.
 
One of my treasured possessions is a Broward Shell Club pin, given to me
by the late Ruth Chessler.  Ruth was show chairman for the Ft.
Lauderdale COA in 1986, the year before LaVern Niere and I were to host
COA in St. Louis.  Ruth let me tag along during the week's events at Ft.
Lauderdale, behind the scenes, and she gave invaluable advice and
assistance.  Her help gave us the confidence that nomatter how well
planned, occasionally events sometime go astray at a COA, but things
generally turn out ok, as what happened with the "seeded" shell
collecting trip at the COA breakfast on the beach event, remember?
(Other notables: remember last year's dive trip? and for real COA trivia
buffs, remember the wet,wet,wet boat trip collecting fieldtrip at
Sanibel 1982?).  She sadly passed away on a shelling trip to the south
Pacific, but I will always remember, when I see a Broward Shell Club
pin, her help for novice convention planners.  She will always be
appreciated and remembered in my heart (and her legacy ontinues with her
shell collecting family!).
 
Pins are memories for shell collectors!
 
Alan Gettleman
Merritt Island, FL
Member, The Greater St. Louis Shell Club, among several other fine
clubs.