Fraternity History & More

A friend who is her 90s is a painter. She does wonderful work. She paints pictures of buildings in her hometown, many of them long gone, so that people will remember what the town looked like when it was prosperous. She painted the high school building on scores of bricks taken from the school’s demolition so that alumni could have something with which to remember the school.  My heart broke when she told me that she loved to paint when she was growing up. In high school, an art teacher told her that she had no talent and would never be a painter. So she stopped pursuing it because of the teacher’s words. When she was in her late 50s, a college offered a painting course in her community. She signed up for the class. That instructor encouraged her and the spark lit a flame. What if she hadn’t allowed the high school teacher to crush her dreams? What would she have accomplished in those 40 years when she let someone’s words stop her from doing something she loved?

Dr. Seuss, a Sigma Phi Epsilon, is one of my favorite authors. His real name is Theodor Seuss Geisel. Dr. Seuss almost never was. The book Geisel wrote, And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, was turned down by 27 publishers. Geisel was ready to burn the manuscript. He had a chance encounter with a Dartmouth classmate who had just been named juvenile editor of Vanguard Press. The rest is history. (for more info see http://wp.me/p20I1i-bh)

Thomas Edison had very little formal schooling and did not attend college. The tireless inventor said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.  Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”  Two of his sons, Charles and Theodore, were members of  the Massachusetts Institute of Technology chapter of Delta Psi (also known as the St. Anthony Club and the Number Six Club).

We are upon the time of year when college acceptance/rejection letters arrive, graduate school admittance and funding decisions are made, and this year’s crop of graduates interview for jobs. To those who get the responses they want, I offer congratulations. For those who get the other letters, do not let disappointment keep you down. It’s never easy to face the “thanks, but no thanks” letters and e-mails. Sometimes Plan B or Plan C or even Plan D can get you to where you want to be. Sometimes they may even take you to a better or more fulfilling place.

“Can’t act, slightly bald, also dances,” is how Fred Astaire remembered the criticism of his first screen test when he was new to Hollywood. He could have taken that as rejection and left town. He didn’t. He kept doing what he loved to do. And how lucky we are for it. Astaire did not attend college, but he was an Honorary member of Delta Kappa Alpha. Organized in 1935 and chartered in 1936, Delta Kappa Alpha began as a professional cinematography fraternity for men.  It was founded at the University of Southern California. On  November 16, 1975, Astaire was honored by the fraternity at its gala. By 1979, all the fraternity’s chapters had closed. The fraternity was brought back to life 30 years later, when two female students at USC began the process of revitalizing the Alpha chapter and fostering colonies where chapters had once been.  Its website states that it is a “Co-Educational, National, Professional Cinema Fraternity for Cinematic Artists of Character.”

The best advice I can give those who face rejection  is from a song Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields composed in 1936; it was used in Swing Time, the film starring Astaire and Ginger Rogers. And how appropriate that Astaire’s fraternity has also followed his advice – “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again!”

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com. 2014. All Rights Reserved.