The Games went extremely well this year with excellent cool weather. Congratulations to Mel and Jeanette Douglass on a great event. I would like to thank Society members Ardeth Brodie, Mark Monroe, Cheryl & Walter May and Sharon & Jim Monteith for their hard work setting up, manning and taking down the H&T booth. The effort was well worthwhile. We were in a prime location with a lot of traffic and interest as well as quite a few new members and more potential sign-ups.
Captain Alistair Macnab's presentation Scotland's Merchant Venturers at the June 2 meeting was extremely well-received by over thirty members and guests including a number of present and former seafarers and shipping executives. Alistair was on top form, impressing the audience with his knowledge of his topic and the way he linked it to the success of the Port of Houston with some pointers for the future. One nice aspect of the meeting was the number of questions from the audience who were clearly fascinated by the topic. Capt. Macnab fielded them all deftly. Most interestingly Rosemary McBride, native Houstonian born in 1920 came forward with a moving eye-witness account of the early days of the Port in the period before WWII when business was slow in coming.
Local personality Helen Mann recently retired after over thirty years at the British Consulate here in Houston, most recently as Vice-Consul for Press Affairs. Among numerous other projects she has been researching her own unique Scottish-Russian heritage, in the course of which she has made a number of research visits to the U.K. and Russia. We are delighted that Helen has agreed to talk to us at the June meeting about her findings, no doubt illustrated with the huge range of humorous anecdotes for which she is noted! I encourage everyone to attend what promises to be a fascinating presentation.
We are delighted to honor Alistair Macnab for his great presentation at the last meeting by having Macnab as the June Tartan of the Month. Check it out at www.heatherandthistle.org.
The main discussion at the business meeting last time was the location of memorabilia related to the Society and how these should best be collected, maintained and exhibited. The idea of storing this material electronically and perhaps making it available on the website seemed to get a positive response. In particular we are keen to locate as many photo albums from past Heather & Thistle Society Burns Suppers as possible. Any thoughts and materials are welcome. This is a topic for discussion at future meetings.
Please send ideas to our new Program Chair Dr. Gordon Macleod at gordymacus@yahoo.com.
Robert Boyd
Chieftain