Club
History
- On May 1, 1978 "Tom
Terrific" Fan Club became an official fan club for Tom Jones.
It took a year to round up 20 members to make us official.
We chose our name from a review of Tom's show at Westbury Music Fair "Tom
Terrific" was in town last night". Tom was appearing at Oakdale in
June of 1978 and we placed an ad in the Oakdale Playbill and from that ad our
membership began to grow. Our first
newsletter was issued July 1978. We
were just a Connecticut based fan club in 1978, since then we have become an
international club. Our membership,
which is 400+, spans all over the U.S.A., throughout every province of Canada,
Puerto Rico, down under in Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Denmark, Japan,
Sweden, Switzerland, Holland, Germany, England, Ireland, and Tom's homeland of
Wales. Our members range from young
to old, which also includes many male members who are great fans of Tom's music.
Margaret
Mariotti - President - I'm 51, a Scorpio, and a lefty. Celine
and I are sisters. I was around 11
when I first heard his voice on the radio singing "It's Not Unusual."
It was not too long after I first heard him on the radio that he appeared
on The Ed Sullivan Show. It
was Tom's TV Series that really got us going.
We watched every show from the very first special to the very last show.
We looked forward to seeing his show every week.
The first LP we bought was "Help Yourself", the first concert
we attended was at Oakdale on June 28, 1971.
We've been very fortunate to have seen Tom many times in person over the
years. I have had the golden opportunity to meet Tom backstage.
He's very quiet and patient. He
makes you feel very comfortable and takes the time to sign autographs and pose
for pictures. These are moments I will treasure forever.
Celine
Rose Mariotti – Vice President - I'm
48 and a Capricorn. I'm a college graduate and I like to write.
I've gotten some of my work published too. I have many pen pals all over the world.
I play the guitar and the banjo. I was 11 years old the first time I saw Tom at
Oakdale. It was a big thrill.
When the National Fan Club disbanded, Margaret and I joined one of the
Chapters. A couple of years after,
we decided we would start our own fan club.
We're happy we did. We have
met so many wonderful people through our fan club not to mention meeting Tom
too. We look forward to many more
happy years running the Club and meeting all of Tom's fans.