A Selective History of the Afghanistan Perceivers
By Dean Clark
Founding Member
Background and First Meeting Tulsa native John Bennett Shaw, arguably the 20th century’s eminent expert on Sherlock Holmes, was widely known for his enormous Sherlockiana and witty presentations, for which he was in great demand around the country. If the location of one of his talks was not the home of a scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars, Shaw would, with infectious elan, encourage his listeners to form one and many were founded as a result. Thus, it must have aggravated Shaw that his hometown, Tulsa, Oklahoma, did not have an organized group dedicated to keeping green the knowledge of The Master. However, in the early 1970s, Shaw identified Stafford Davis as one who could get such an organization, not only started, but up to full speed almost instantaneously. Davis’s credentials were: being an avid reader of the Holmes canon; his expertise as a public relations professional with extensive contacts around town; personal energy; a vast imagination; and an uncanny ability to make almost anyone work on his projects, no matter how crazy they sounded. The first person whom Davis recruited was Richard Johnson, his neighbor across the street on Reservoir Hill in northwest Tulsa. Their strategy was simple: Call everyone they knew who might be interested in starting a Sherlock club. The response was sufficient to schedule a meeting in 1974 of about 30 people at Johnson's house. The group founded the Afghanistan Perceivers. (I am the only attendee at that meeting still an active member of the Perceivers. Johnson and I had met in 1969 while we finished our military obligations at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. We had no common interests, except Sherlock Holmes, so we became friends. A native Tulsan, Johnson returned home after his discharge to attend law school. I moved to Tulsa after exiting the U.S. Army to join the sports staff at the Tulsa World. We had no contact between 1969 and 1974, but, since my byline regularly appeared in print, Johnson called me when he and Davis began rounding up attendees for the first meeting.) I remember a few particulars from that first meeting: Davis reviewed the newly published novel The Seven Percent Solution, which deserves much credit for reviving interests in The Master following a post-Basil Rathbone slump in the 1950s and ’60s, and picking a name for this group. My memory of the latter is disputed by the late Dick Warner. I recall that names for the group were placed in nomination, a vote was held, and the Afghanistan Perceivers was the winner. Warner claims that Davis himself had suggested the name Afghanistan Perceivers and artfully discarded via slight of hand any votes for the competition. Readers may choose which version to accept. Other obscurities about the founding and that first meeting are:
Davis was the leader of the Perceivers from its first meeting until his death in 1997. During this time, the group developed a well-deserved reputation as one of the most active BSI scions in the country. It had two sub-groups, the Central Press Syndicate and the Brown Bagatelle Club, both of which met monthly, held regular social events and featured guest speakers from all walks of life. Davis was known as the True Perceiver, a title that was retired after his death. Vic Lahti led the Perceivers from 1997 until his death in 2019 and held the title of Sparking Plug. Richard Kearns, while never president of the Perceivers, led the Central Press Syndicate from the late ’90s until 2016, when he and five other Perceivers formed their own group, the Elder Brothers of John H. Watson Society. Kearns and I organized the Perceivers’ 40th anniversary symposium and dinner on 20 Sept. 2014. Kearns also supervised annual visits to Natural Falls State Park in the Ozarks of Delaware County, Oklahoma, to recall details of “The Final Problem”; no people, animals or landscapes were harmed in the reenactments. Kearns died early in the pandemic in 2020. Rosalie Mollica assumed the Perceivers’ presidency after Lahti’s death and led the Perceivers through the COVID-19 era by seamlessly switching monthly in-person meetings to Zoom. The Perceivers have nine virtual gatherings a year and three in-person celebrations the other months. The virtual meetings allowed the group to expand the scope of its membership, with Perceivers in Minnesota and Colorado. The Staffordian Days Richard Kearns, a prominent force with the Perceivers for more than two decades, coined the word Staffordian to describe the steady flow of the outrageous ideas that emanated from co-founder Stafford Davis. The most off-the-wall proposals, never acted upon, included:
Some of Davis’s schemes did come to glorious fruition, namely a float in Tulsa’s Christmas Parade, with Langston playing a provocative part in the proceedings; a memorable bus trip to Watson, Oklahoma, in the late 1970s; the ascent of Holmes Peak, the only spot on Earth named for The Master, in the mid-1980s; and the notable opening of a Holmes play at the Tulsa Little Theatre on Delaware Avenue in the 1980s. (John H.) Watson, Oklahoma The trip to Watson was in the late 1970s, when the Perceivers had been in existence for about five years. Davis arranged for a top-of-the-line Greyhound bus to take about 25 Perceivers from downtown Tulsa to Watson to pay tribute to John H. Watson, the companion and biographer of The Master. Watson, population 600, is an unincorporated town in extreme southeastern Oklahoma and a 2-to-3-hour drive from anyplace significant because of the hilly, curving roads. One has to really want to get there. (Watson was also a focal point at the Great Whimsical Sherlockian Tour of Oklahoma and Texas in 2005.) I participated in both journeys; thus, it is a statistical certainty that I am the only BSI member who has been to Watson twice. I doubt my record will ever be equaled. Davis stocked the Greyhound with adult beverages and I, then relatively lively and having intimations of immortality and an efficient metabolism, consumed more than my share. Hence, my memories of my first visit to Watson may not be 100% accurate. I do recall that the group assembled at Ron’s Citgo and Grocery and marched behind a pair of bag pipers through the one paved street that constituted downtown Watson. A plaque, extolling the many virtues of John H. Watson, Sherlock Holmes’s chronicler, was presented to the proprietor of Ron’s. A second plaque was also presented. Watson is so small that its school then comprised grades 1-6. The plaque, given to the principal and subsequently mounted on the school building, read simply, “Elementary, Watson.” A sad postscript: When I returned to Watson in 2005, neither the school plaque nor Ron’s Citgo and Grocery could be located. Holmes Peak Ascent In the mid-1980s, the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce decided the city had everything it needed to be a tourist mecca … except publicity, because nobody, aside from residents, seemed to know the city’s attractions. This, the chamber reasoned, could be addressed by articles in travel magazines. About two dozen writers were invited to visit the city en masse. By this time, Perceivers co-founder Dick Warner had accomplished the incredible feat of getting a hill on Tulsa’s northwest outskirts in the Osage County to be officially named Holmes Peak by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1984. It is the only geographical feature on Earth named for The Master and quickly achieved notoriety. (The moon’s Sherlock Crater is about 1 kilometer from the landing site of Apollo 17 in 1972.) Holmes Peak had reached the ears of the travel-writing brigade, which insisted on a visit to Holmes Peak as part of its tour. The Tulsa Chamber wisely asked Davis to set it up. The result was his masterstroke as leader of the Perceivers. The writers were taken by bus to the bottom of Holmes Peak, which Davis designated as Base Camp 1. They were greeted by yours truly. I lectured on the geology and geophysics of the area and showed them detailed seismic sections of the area, which had been obtained from Seismograph Services Corporation. After this presentation, the group began the arduous ascent. Upon reaching Base Camp 2, about halfway to the peak, they were greeted by a woman from the Oxley Nature Center, who lectured on the flora and fauna of the area. She was far superior to the previous speaker. The travel writers were mesmerized ... to the point we might still be there if the proceedings had not been interrupted by the sudden appearance of a yeti at the summit of Holmes Peak. The yeti waved to the troupe to continue the ascent, so the trek resumed. Gullible readers should be assured that the yeti was a Tulsa Chamber employee who had borrowed the costume from an oil company that used the yeti as a mascot at home games of the Tulsa Roughnecks of the now defunct of the North American Soccer League. It was unofficially, but universally, known as the Getty Yeti. Years later, I learned the costumed representative was pregnant at the time, so we actually saw 1.5 yetis. The climb to the top of Holmes Peak was well worth it because Davis had arranged for a sit-down meal under an enormous tent with linen napkins, china and appropriate stemware. A brass quintet playing selections from Gilbert and Sullivan serenaded the diners. Other Playfulness Despite Davis’s brilliant effort, Tulsa did not turn into a tourist mecca. Warner’s detailed account of his successful quest to have a Tulsa promontory named for The Master (including a description of his letter to Pope John Paul II) was published by the Perceivers in 2005 in the volume The Care of the Restored Losses. The appearance of The Seven Percent Solution, both the novel and subsequent movie, in the mid-1970s ignited a worldwide tsunami of interest in Sherlockiana. Many theatres, large and small, professional and amateur, jumped on the bandwagon by staging plays about the master. These included the Royal Shakespeare Company (with productions of Gillette’s play Sherlock Holmes in London and New York and at Tulsa Little Theatre, still in its quaint location on Delaware Avenue. I don’t remember the title of Tulsa Little Theatre’s production, but Davis reserved the first three rows on opening night for the Perceivers. They arrived en masse, shortly before curtain time, and paraded to their seats accompanied by bagpipes and drums. This created pandemonium backstage, where the cast, suffering from the usual opening-night nerves, were startled. Garry Kemp, a London native who settled in Tulsa as a radio personality, played Holmes. He peeked through the curtain to ascertain the cause of the multi-decibel noise. He soon asked the assistant stage manager, 17-year-old Will Thomas (already a member of the Perceivers – perhaps the youngest ever), “What is going on?” “That’s just the local Sherlock club doing their thing,” Thomas said. “They are completely crazy,” Kemp said. “I must join immediately.” He did … and was active in the group until moving to Missouri a few years later. Thomas became a librarian and author of the Barker/Llewelyn mystery novels, 15 in total as of 2024 and set in the 1880s. He credits his exposure to the crime milieu of the Victorian Era while a member of the Perceivers as the foundation of his career. A Final Anecdote about Stafford Davis While Davis was hospitalized with his terminal illness in 1997, his friend Peter Blau, one of the most respected Sherlockians in the world, visited. When informed that he had a visitor, Davis asked the nurse to delay Blau’s arrival for a couple of minutes so he could arrange his hair. When Blau came into the room, Davis was wearing a Bozo the Clown fright wig. Stafford Davis always had the last laugh. |
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