by Linda Theil
Members of the Shakespeare Fellowship (SF) and the Shakespeare Oxford Society (SOS) have approved the unification of the two organizations under a new name and board. SOS President John Hamill and SF President Tom Regnier announced the members’ decision at the closing banquet of the joint SF/SOS Annual Conference in Toronto on October 20. Under the terms of the merger ballot, John Hamill is the president of the new organization, which will be known as the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship (SOF).
Hamill leads a new Board of Trustees who were nominated by SOS and SF board members and who took office immediately upon approval by the unification vote. In addition to Hamill, the new SOF board includes Tom Regnier as First Vice President, Joan Leon as Second Vice President, Michael Morse as Treasurer, and Richard Joyrich as Secretary, along with Trustees Ramon Jiménez, Lynne Kositsky, Tom Rucker, and Earl Showerman.
New SOF President Hamill said:
The vote for unification was almost unanimous! We knew there were no issues that differentiated us in any realistic way that justified maintaining separate organizations, and we both have the same main objective — provide more research to prove to the general public that Oxford was the author of the works under Shakespeare’s name. We will be looking at several ways to raise the funding for this. But first, we need to start with more mundane issues such as merging our websites and preparing a new letterhead and logo, and we need to send out a donation appeal as the SOF. This we will hopefully achieve over the next month. We also need to send out a new SOF membership renewal form in January. I expect this new year will prove to be very exciting as more authorship evidence is uncovered and revealed.
Results of the SOS members’ unification vote were announced at the SOS Annual Meeting on October 19. SOS vote teller Frank Davis announced a total of 138 ballots in favor of the unification, two negative votes, and two abstentions. The SF members held their vote at the SF Annual Meeting on October 20. The SF votes were counted by outgoing SF Treasurer Alex McNeil, who will edit the newsletter for the unified organization, and visiting De Vere Society member Heward Wilkinson. Outgoing SF President Tom Regnier announced the vote of 74 in favor of unification and four against.
