Scott Cummings joined the Oz Club in 1979 and began attending conventions in the 1990s. Early on, he published an Oz newsletter for East Coast members of the Oz Club. He was elected to the Club’s Board of Directors in 2008 and 2009, and then volunteered to take on the editorship of The Baum Bugle, remaining in that position for four years. At the 2017 Board of Directors’ meeting, Scott agreed to return to the board by appointment to a vacant seat.
Perhaps Scott’s most memorable achievement while editor was to get the Bugle back on a regular publishing schedule for the first time in recent memory. While editor, he sought out admissions, ensuring broad-based coverage of all Oz issues, and wrote many articles himself. His attention to content, design, and diversity was remarkable. He sent out Ozzy, one-of-a-kind thank you cards to his contributing editors after each issue.
Scott presented an outstanding talk, “The Castles of Oz,” at the 2012 National Convention in Holland, Michigan. His presentation about the stage musical, The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, was a highlight of the 2014 National Convention in Chittenango; it later became a two-part feature in The Baum Bugle.
Scott’s articles for the Bugle include “Hidden Details in Neill’s Artwork for The Road to Oz” (2009), “Martin Gardner’s Oz Writings: A Checklist” (2012), “The Tik-Tok Man of Oz: The Fairyland Extravaganza of 1913-14″ (2014), “Practically an Impossibility” (2015), and “The Wonderful Wizard of Menlo” (2016). He also edited several “Oz Under Scrutiny” departments and initiated a new semi-regular feature titled “The Great Book of Records,” featuring Oziana found in newspaper archives.
In 2016, Scott stepped forward to volunteer as interim editor for The Baum Bugle while the search for a new editor continued. His voluntarism was particularly generous; as co-chairman of the Club’s 2017 convention, he was already shouldering considerable responsibility and devoting much time to planning both our Chicago event programming and its related Oz-specific historic tour into the city.
Also in 2017, Scott loaned the exceptionally scarce Wogglebug Cards from his personal collection to the Kansas City exhibit “Over the Rainbow, Toys from the Land of Oz,” supporting a successful effort to assemble all pre-1939 Oz toys in a public exhibit for the first time. As a Baum Bugle editor and contributor, presenter, and Oz Club convention chairman, Scott has met and surpassed every criteria for the L. Frank Baum Memorial Award.