THE 14TH ANNUAL TEXAS BAHA’I BLUEBONNET CONFERENCE IN AUSTIN, TEXAS

February 18th thru 20th,  2011

This year’s conference promises to be as inspirational and entertaining as any before it. The date for the next Texas Baha'i Bluebonnet Conference will be February 18th thru 20th, 2011 and we are pleased to announce that former member of the Universal House of Justice, Mr. Hooper Dunbar, will be our keynote speaker.

Hooper Cameron Dunbar (b. March 30, 1937) is former member of the Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing body of the Bahá’í Faith. On January 6th, 2010 it was announced that he would retire following a by-election to replace him. He retired along with Dr. Peter Khan.

Mr. Dunbar was born in Los Angeles, California, United States. He worked as an actor on stage and screen, making films with Columbia, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Twentieth Century-Fox studios, and was a member of the Screen Actors' Guild of America. In 1958, he left Hollywood to take up residence in Central and South America, where he taught arts and English as a second language, and set up a graphic design business. However, his primary interest during those years was volunteer work as a teacher and lecturer for the Bahá’í Faith.

Mr. Dunbar served as a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Nicaragua from its inception in 1961 to 1963, when he represented that Assembly at the first International Convention in Haifa, Israel. Subsequently, he was appointed as an Auxiliary Board for the Protection of the Faith in the Americas and served from 1963 to 1968, and then as a Counsellor for the Protection and Propagation of the Faith from 1968 1973, also for the America. He took up residence in Israel in 1973 when he was named as one of the founding members of the International Teaching Centre. Mr. Dunbar served as a member of that institution for fifteen years, until he was elected to the Universal House of Justice in 1988.

Throughout his service at the World Centre Mr. Dunbar held a Thursday evening study class for the youth volunteering there. The class ran consistently for over 30 years.

Mr. Dunbar is an author of the Companion to Kitáb-i-Iqán (The materials gathered together in this Study Companion are intended to stimulate study of Bahá'u'lláh's Book of Certitude, the Kitáb-i-Íqán) and Forces of Our Time (An examination of the processes that are creating a new, divine civilization and the negative forces that have risen to resist the divine purpose).