President’s Day 2009

In honor of President’s Day 2009, we salute the President of the HemisFair ’68 Woman’s Pavilion, Mrs. Vivian Johnson Hamlin Terrett. Terrett held a number of leadership positions in civic and historical preservation organizations. In the picture below, Terrett is pictured among other chairmen of A Night in Old San Antonio (NIOSA), an event occurring each April as part of San Antonio’s Fiesta.

Click for full picture. Vivian Johnson Hamlin Terrett posing with other NIOSA chairmen in San Antonio Magazine, 1980, Vivian Johnson Hamlin Terrett Papers, 1966-1990, MS 100, Archives and Special Collections, UTSA Library.

In addition to serving as the Woman’s Pavilion President from 1966-1968 and NIOSA chairman from 1960-1961, Terrett served as the President of the San Antonio Conservation Society (SACS), 1961-1963 and 1971-1973; Director, Fiesta San Antonio Commission, 1961-1966; President, Texas State Historic Theatre Foundation of San Jose Mission, 1964; Vice-President, and founding member, San Antonio Arts Council, 1965-1966; and Chairman, San Antonio Bicentennial Commission, 1975-1977. She received numerous citations for her work.

The Vivian Hamlin Johnson Papers, 1966-1990, include printed material, correspondence, reports, photographs, scrapbook material, and artifacts documenting Terrett’s work in civic and cultural organizations in San Antonio, notably the HemisFair Woman’s Pavilion and the San Antonio Bicentennial Commission. There are also personal items in the collection.

Terrett wrote a quote on her Woman’s Pavilion folder that still has me scratching my head, several months after I first saw it. It says: “Women are wiser than men — Because they know less and understand more.” I know that the quote comes from James Thurber, but I definitely don’t understand it — a flaw in Thurber’s theory? Regardless, my hat’s off to Vivian Terrett, a remarkably accomplished lady whose papers enrich the Archives.