South Texas Macintosh Users Group History
by Ralph R. Gayle
gayle2000_2000@yahoo.com
I was in the Padre Staples Mall (now La Palmera) in Corpus Christi, Texas the last of April 1984. I was talking with Dr. Jeffery Hull, a local pediatrician. He said “I have to tell you I ordered the new Macintosh.” I told him that I also had ordered a new Macintosh out of Houston. We talked and decided we needed to start a Mac Club. He said he would get the word out, but didn’t know where we could meet. At that time I was teaching English for Aransas Pass High School. I had worked with Del Mar College so it was easy to get us a meeting room in Del Mar’s English Department. Our first meeting was the first Thursday in May. We had 28 people attending the first meeting without any computers.
I had the second Macintosh in South Texas, with an Apple programmer having the first one. Everybody that had a Mac brought it to the meeting. We elected Jeffery president at the June meeting. Also the Apple programmer ran 300 feet of telephone line from an office to our meeting room. He had written a program for the new computer. He called a friend and had it to say: “Hi Atari, this is the Mac.”
We very quickly outgrew the English room and moved to the Music Department. In July we decided to collect dues of $25.00 for each family. After much debate over the price, it was voted that we would collect $25.00 and never raise the price. Today the dues are still $25.00 for a family. William (Bill) Schroeder said he would be the treasurer until another person was found. Bill was our treasurer until December 2010. At that time Jennie Ashmore stepped forward to be St Mug’s treasurer. Today, 2017, she is still St Mug’s treasurer.
A man named Steve, who owned a computer store at six points, told the group if we would meet at his store he would give all of the members free software and keep us up-to-date. The club voted to make the move. This was our meeting place until Apple pulled all Apple computers from his store. At that time we moved to the Browning Building off of Staples for a few meetings. We had to move from there because there was no elevator.
St Mug moved back to Del Mar College where we continued to meet for a long time. At one of our meetings we went to the Music Department. They played the record La Bomba and with use of their equipment within about an hour, wrote a complete orchestra arrangement on the Macintosh.
We moved to Texas A & M – Corpus Christi (The Island University) because they had Macintosh computers in the Computer Lab. This worked very well with one of our members (Bryan) being in charge of the Computer Lab. After he moved to a new job, the new man would not let us put any new software on the computer to review at the meetings. Also they were closed for Christmas vacation and didn’t start back until later in January. Not being able to meet the first Thursday in January we met for dinner at different restaurants for our Christmas Party. This is now a tradition: meeting for our Christmas Party in January.
We moved to the ReMax building on Holly until they lost their lease. John Rankin found us a great place to meet at the Garden Center, 5325 Greely Dr., Corpus Christi, Texas 78412. St Mug donated a 42 inch TV to the Garden Center and had it installed on the wall. Now we can hook up the club’s computer to the TV for our meetings.
Our current President is John Rankin, Vice President is Jeff McKamey, Treasurer is Jennie Ashmore, Secretary is Katherine McKamey, and Web Master is Clarissa Creel Bryant.
Come the first Thursday of each month and be part of St Mug’s History!