How did the first Star Trek convention come about?

Almost immediately in 1970, after the show was cancelled in '69, a group of people in New York got together and they were lawyers and brokers um, Wall Street people, and they put some money together and said, 'Let's get some friends together and celebrate how wonderful it was'. They decided to go to a hotel, get a hotel ball room, and then they said, 'Why don't we invite, friends from out of town?' and so they all decided to throw in three hundred bucks apiece, I think there was about four or five of them.

Then somebody said, 'Do you think the cast would come and do you think Gene Roddenberry would come?' And they said, 'God, I don't think so.'

'Well, they can only say no. That's the worst they can say.' and so they called and everybody said, 'That would be wonderful.' And it was the first Star Trek convention in New York.