The brainchild and prime movers of the Hawthorne Society were David B. Kesterson, a young English professor at North Texas State in Denton, and C. E. Frazer Clark Jr., a wealthy bibliophile, collector of Hawthorneana, and compiler of the authoritative primary bibliography of Hawthorne. It all came together at the New York Hilton MLA meeting in 1975. Over seventy people attended, among them a Who's Who at the time: Arlin Turner, Hyatt Waggoner, Norman Holmes Pearson, Marjorie Elder, Rita Gollin, Edward Davidson, Manning Hawthorne, Terence Martin, Claude M. Simpson, and Alfred Weber. Among those present whose publications later proved worthy of joining this group were Claudia Johnson, Buford Jones, John J. McDonald, Romana Hull, and Samuel Chase Coale (certainly one of the last survivors of that first gathering).David Kesterson was voted first president of the Society, and it was he who became editor of the Hawthorne Society Newsletter for the following eight years, providing helpful notices of forthcoming meetings relevant to Hawthorne studies, information on papers presented at Hawthorne meetings, notes and queries, announcements of various kinds, reports on the progress of the Centenary Edition, short critical articles, and photo representations of Hawthorne scholars taken at MLA meetings and the biennial summer conferences. The Newsletter came out twice a year, priced at $4.00, the cost of membership. During the same years, Frazer Clark edited The Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal, a yearly hardback publication containing important critical essays along with information on and representatives of Clark's trove of Hawthorne artifacts. The Society got off to a good start and gradually increased membership from the United States and from Europe and Japan.Beyond his devoted work for the Hawthorne Society, David contributed his own scholarship to Hawthorne studies, publishing many essays and editing a collection of essays on The House of the Seven Gables. His scholarly interests were several, for he contributed work on Poe, Twain, Edgar Wilson (Bill) Nye, and Henry Wheeler Shaw (Josh Billings). As if his support for the Hawthorne Society were not enough, he was an active member of the American Humor Studies Association, of which he also served as president. Later in his career, he became dean of the college of Arts and Sciences at North Texas University, Provost, Vice President of Academic Affairs, and then Special Assistant to the President.During these late years, his participation in Hawthorne Society meetings became less frequent, as one might readily understand. But it was always a great pleasure, from the outset to the latter days, to see David at our meetings, accompanied without fail by his wife Cheryl, and, as if there were nothing he'd rather be doing, with his warm smile and generous attention and Southern accent and manners. He never failed to make me feel as if I were the only person in the world he would rather see. I was by no means alone in feeling this way. The man was better than good.