Jerry Ochs

Ann,

Doris Day was born at 3475 Greenlawn Avenue.  My mother, Vera Ellen (White Christmas, On The Town), and Doris took dancing lessons together at Hessler's Dance Studio on Mt. Adams.  It's a small small small small world.

Philip Spiess

As usual, I feel I must add my piece.  Why did I want to go to Walnut Hills High School?  The answer is very simple:  on the buffet in our dining room stood two china commemorative plates with lovely etchings on them, one of Hughes High School, from which my father had graduated (1936), and one of Walnut Hills High School, from which my mother had graduated (1939).  Much as I love towers (I go up them whenever I can), as a small child I became infatuated with Walnut Hills's dome (I can't tell you why, but I also go up domes whenever I can -- some day I'll post the photo of me atop the U. S. Capitol dome), and I determined that that was the school I was going to go to.  (It was only much later that I realized -- academically -- that that was the school that I should go to, as opposed to Hughes, which was my district high school.)

As to fraternities and sororities, my family and I thought that these were things reserved for college, not high school.  I know that a number of you have expressed astonishment that I not only joined a fraternity in college, but was elected president of it in my sophomore year.  It was a great experience, and great fun.  The fraternity had nearly not taken me -- no doubt they considered me a Geek (not Greek), as I carried (for god's sakes!) a walking stick around campus -- and yet I was elected president the following year (apparently they recognized greatness when they saw it), a point of which I constantly reminded them when they gave me grief (I protected the fraternity several times from the Dean of Men -- vide Animal House -- and nearly got expelled for it -- but that's another story, or two).  During my tenure as president, I introduced the fraternity (whether it wanted it or not) to classical music, particularly opera (which I played loudly throughout the house and sang in the shower -- there was a great echo there), also to great literature (by virtue of conducting in-house seminars on such for brothers who were struggling through those courses), and I raised the fraternity house scholastic average from the lowest of all the men's living units on the Hanover College campus (fraternity and independent dorms) to the highest, winning the campus's Men's Scholarship Trophy for that year (awarded by the Dean of Men, who hated my guts, and therefore hated handing me the trophy); this also raised our chapter nationally in the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity system from 102nd place to 14th place!  Ah, yes, you may ask, how was that achieved?  Answer:  by the simple expedient of awarding a steak and beer dinner "on the house" to every member of the chapter who made the Dean's List!  [N.B.:  Alcohol was verboten at Hanover College, a central point of our -- and my -- contention with the Dean of Men.] It worked!  I've never been sure that any or all of the (mostly) Indiana farm boys who were my fraternity brothers ever really understood me, but I did (I think) certainly expand their horizons as to what to think about and what to do (and to recognize what other types of personalities there are in the world!).

Oh, yeah, Jerry, Doris Kappelhoff (a.k.a. Doris Day), was also a featured singer on the (second) Island Queen steamboat (owned by Coney Island Amusement Park and making the trip from Cincinnati to the park in the summers), which blew up in Pittsburgh in 1947.

Jerry Ochs

Barbara and others who joined a sorority or fraternity,

What were the benefits?   What were the drawbacks?  If you could return to those times would you do it again?

(I'm beginning to sound like Dr. J. Safer '65.)

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

I particularly loved my high school sorority, Iota Sigma Chi, originally created for daughters of the first African American Greek-lettered sorority for college educated women.  The girls were from primarily Withrow, and Woodward, but the years I was a member, there were girls from Hughes, Central and Taft. I don't know when IEX was started, but the requirement to join was based on whether you were already friends with older girls in the IEX. I met,  and became friends with many girls I would have never met because we didn't all live in the same neighborhood or go to the same school or church. I'm sure we had worthwhile activities because one of our mothers was the adult advisor, but most of all, I remember having meetings at the Melrose Ave. "Y", trying to look sophisticated by smoking cigarettes.  I really enjoyed it and made lifelong friends. 
My college sorority experience was just the opposite. I didn't pledge my mother's sorority until my junior year.  I had transferred from Ohio State  to HBCU Knoxville College and at both schools, I had missed rush because I enrolled too late. My junior year, I pledged but living in the junior/senior dorm and my roommate already an AKA, the sorority hazed me relentlessly because they had access to me 24/7. It got really violent the night before my mother and her best friend (a national executive of the sorority) were coming to the initiation to pin me. The girls ripped off my clothing, trying to remove my pledge pin that was worn on my bra. There was one girl, who was the ringleader, but my roommate joined in with the others. I fought those girls, took off the pledge pin, handed to the ringleader an told them, "You can have your pin. I can't see how you could do this to me tonight, and be my sister tomorrow!" The next day my mother and her friend arrived on campus.After they saw how angry I still was and not wanting anything to do with the sorority, they accepted that I didn't want to become a member.  My mother's friend took some type of action to discipline the chapter.  My roommate, who's husband was in Vietnam in the Army, moved off campus when he returned.  I had my dorm room to myself and stayed in it as little as possible for the rest of the year.  I took a gap year off from school. By the time I went back, everyone involved was gone.

Over the years, many of my friends who belong to AKA have asked me to join the graduate chapter, dedicated to philanthropy and community activities.  Being part of the sorority was what I always looked forward to when I was young, but after college, I found other interests and other networking opportunities  

Gail Weintraub (Stern)

Joining a sorority was "the thing to do". I never questioned it. However, during the rush process, I learned of the hurt inflicted on those who were not asked back to the second round of rush parties and ultimatley on those who were not accepted to the sorority that they wished to pledge. Never the less, I joined. I enjoyed the weekly Sunday afternoons spent with my Gamma Kappa sisters. We were involved in philanthropic projects and parties throughout the year. Senior year, I vowed to not apply to any college/university with a Greek system. This meant that I would go to a women's college. I loved a campus free of sorority divisiveness. To this day, most of my closest high school friends are my sorority sisters.

Were all sororities/fraternities divided my race and religion? Was there any overlap? 

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Jerry, I feel much like Gail did.  It was the thing to do and it was fun.  It wasn't until later that I realized we must have hurt many people and made them feel left out.  I also enjoyed the philanthropic activities. I remember volunteering at St Joseph's. I am wondering now if that was a home for unwed mothers or just an extension of St Aloyisius. I was very naiive and didn't question in those days.  

I never wanted to be in a sorority again. and didn't join in college.  My husband to be was in a fraternity and since I met him my freshman year my social life revolved around him.  

I think I have improved with age and I'm not sure I would like my teen aged self very much if I met her now. 

Steven Levinson

Gail, Kappa Sigma, an old-line redneck southern fraternity founded at the University of Virginia, thought it was segregated by race and religion until Beta Zeta chapter (Stanford) took me, probably the first Jew in the national fraternity's very long history, and Rafe Palacio, certainly the first black guy, in the spring of 1964 (end of freshman year, which was when rushing occorred at Stanford).  Rafe and I were part of a group of seven or so guys from my freshman dorm.  I was elected Grand Scribe (secretary) for two years, and Rafe was the Rush Chair when the National suspended the chapter for a year, pretextually for failure to follow fraternity ritual, but actually because Rafe was black.  I may have been a pioneer religionwise, but I was soon followed by Mike Sandler and Bruce Weiner.

Philip Spiess

Dave Buchholz, I hate to say it, but in your wedding picture up above (Post #4801) you look like the young (very young) John Bolton.

Philip Spiess

To recap on my remarks on my fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta (better known as "Fiji"; founded at what became Washington and Jefferson College, originally located at Canonsburg, Pennsylvania) at Hanover College, Indiana:

Yes, we had Jewish brothers in our fraternity; no, we did not have African-American brothers in our fraternity (at that time).  When I joined, in the Spring of 1965, one of my two favorite upperclassmen brothers was Arnie Wasserman, proud Jewish boy from Warwick, Rhode Island.  He kept a tank of piranhas in his room in the fraternity house and would occasionally let me feed them raw hamburger (talk about a feeding frenzy!).

The question of admitting African-Americans to brotherhood in the fraternity was a matter of deep debate within the national fraternity in the mid-1960s.  One line of argument was:  "Blacks now have their own exclusively black fraternities on many college campuses, so why do they need us?"  (The obverse of this coin of wisdom was, of course, "So why do we need them?")  While I was president of my chapter, I attended the national convention, or "Ekklesia," of Phi Gamma Delta in Denver (1966); the question of admitting black members was one of the major issues that was brought up for a national vote that year.  Heavily debated, it was closely defeated, but at the next Ekklesia (1968) a similar motion passed, and African-Americans have been members of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity ever since.

Jerry Ochs

Now I know how our teachers must have felt because all I wanted was info on the sorority/fraternity scene in high school. 

Here is a treat for anglers and photographers.

Steven Levinson

Jerry, you a very funny man.  Apparently, our teachers' collective investment paid off.

Jerry Ochs

Steven,

Thanks for the compliment.  I would say that I am blushing to the roots of my hair but I don't have enough hair to make my case. If I didn't fear what Spiess would make of it I could say I am flushing. 

Philip Spiess

I won't be privy to those remarks.

Steven Levinson

You two should be part of the "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" show on NPR.

Jerry Ochs

Here's something for Phil to sink his teeth into.

ISABELLINE is a pale beige colour. According to legend, its name alludes to the colour of Isabella of Spain’s underwear: she allegedly refused to change her underclothes until her husband Albert of Austria won victory at the Siege of Ostend in 1601.
The siege went on to last 3 years.

Philip Spiess

I refuse to sink my teeth into anyone's underwear.  Undoubtedly her underclothing started out as starched white linen, and only underwent a sea-change to pale beige after being worn for three years.  Frankly, if I were Isabella, I would have changed husbands, as well as my underwear, if that's the best he could do in a siege -- and of Ostend, of all places!  (Better the Ost End of London -- which is no picnic even in the best of times, as "the Ripper" will tell you.)

[Um, wasn't "Isabelline" one of the first rock-and-roll songs, recorded by Chuck Berry in the 1950s?  Just askin'.]

Jerry Ochs

Steven,

I think "shot......chaser" would be apt considering how much we both enjoy a wee dram.

Putting aside this jolly persiflage and badinage so as to return to our alma mater, I would like to ask the women who belong to this forum a somewhat personal question.  After gym class in the changing room, did any girls ever snap each other on the butt with twisted up wet towels?  

Jerry Ochs

This just in.. I hope somebody who knows Yiddish can confirm that the mask in the photo was supposed to have "NYC Strong" printed on it but the designer didn't know to print it from right to left, so it says "NYC Crotch".

Stephen Collett

We had a thing up for a short while there, started by Gail and engaged by Jerry, that was to look at race relations and the frat/soro system and what effects on us. Then we got into the hilarious consideration of the queen´s underwear.

The questions have set me thinking alot about those things. John Compton and I chose each other as locker-partners the first day of 7th grade and he was the first person of color my own age that I had ever had any relationship with. But of course that was only a start and I regret today that we didn´t develop that relationship to include spending more time together in non-sports-related time outside of school. One of the reasons for that, I can answer for my own case, was fraternities. Yes Jerry, wasp, jewish and colored faternities and sororoties. And not only that but cleavages in my wasp community between the wasp (which could include Catholics)frats. Your friends in the final three years would pretty much be decided in your 10th grade choice of frat. Of course we hopped those bounds, and my best friends turned out to be mostly Jewish. And there was dear Bill Sinkford who could glide in and out of most milieux; maybe not so much the heavy BOA jock club but I doubt that bothered him (are you there Bill? I only mean to point you out as an exception to the rule). I have testified in one of our reunion open-mike sessions that my frat was primarily a drinking club and that drinking was the central bling of recruitment and initiation. But I know youth will get into those things on their own, quite without organized help. But the restriction of the field of social relationships were the worst aspect. As I understand it they have been, what? "banned"? Do they live on (we would have) as secret societies? 

Steven Levinson

That's Hebrew, Jerry.  Sheesh!

Steven Levinson

Steve C, the fraternities/sororities obviously exacerbated the social stratification/segregation that was WHHS, but, for me, it began on the first day of the seventh grade.

Jerry Ochs

Steven et al.,

I thought so too, but I googled Yiddish alphabet and the result changed my mind. In addition, I googled nyc crotch and every link called it Yiddish.  Go figure.  Here is one example.

The trouble began when they tried to sell a “NYC Strong” mask using the Yiddish word for strong, shtark. But while Yiddish is written right-to-left, like Hebrew, the Yiddish letters in shtark [שטאַרק] were printed left-to-right [קראַטש], meaning that anyone looking at it the correct way would read shtark backwards – as “crotch.”

Jerry Ochs

Stephen and Steven,

In addition to the barriers thrown up by the GLOs, there was a great divide regarding dating.  The way I remember it, the white boys and the black boys agreed that nobody was taking away "their women".  Regarding anti-Semitism, I didn't sense it as being ubiquitous, but I was painfully naive and didn't know or care who was Jewish and who was not until the GLO pledging began.  Didn't that also have overtones of males protecting their females from predators?

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

We should all know by this time that Jerry is a thorough researcher. He is correct about everything.....

Although the Yiddish could possibly sound out as "crutch" as well as "crotch".....

Steven Levinson

Jerry, "uncle" on the Yiddish thing.  Thorough research by you, as usual.  There must have been some antisemitism at WHHS (as in the boys' PE department), but that's not what I experienced from day one.  It was the social stratification and segregation, self-imposed by the kids (especially the Avondale, Bond Hill, and Roselawn Jews, who Danny Brown dubbed "the neaties").