A club meeting July 20, 2014. The subject was papers and inks - (18 of us)
Research Triangle Pen Club meetings are held at Crazy Alan's Emporium, Timberlyne Shopping Center on Weaver Dairy Road in Chapel Hill. We meet once a month - usually the second Sunday of the month at 2:00. Everyone is welcome - No membership fees. Information on club meetings is available on Facebook and the Research Triangle Pen Club group page.
The club was founded on February 21, 1999, by Deb Kinney and Ross McKinney. The origin story includes a small vintage pen show held at Sharon Luggage and Gifts in Northgate Mall in Durham (neither of which still exists in Durham). Deb and Ross each had pens for sale, and Deb had a sign-up sheet for people interested in fountain pens. From that casual beginning the club was launched. We first met in Elmo's, then the basement of the Regulator Bookstore. As the club grew, we moved to the Mad Hatter Bake Shop in Durham, but while that could handle our group size, it was noisy and impossible to have a coherent topical presentation. At some point around 2010, Deb dropped out of leadership, and for several years Ross ran the club on an every-other month basis. In 2015, largely because they were hoping for monthly meetings, David Rzeszotarski and Tom Baley assumed leadership. The group began meeting monthly in the Chapel Hill Library. During Covid, the club had an enforced hiatus, but resumed in 2021. Ross McKinney joined David Rzeszotarski as a co-leader in August 2023. For more than a year, the group met at St. Luke's Episcopal Church (thank you, Paul Welty!), but in January 2024 we began to meet at Crazy Alan's Emporium in Chapel Hill (thank you, John Sulivan and Michele Kowal!). Sadly, David Rzeszotarski died abruptly in August, 2026, and Ross McKinney is continuing as the club leader.