Dear Group, Now this is another bit of memories of mine but it's not one of the "warm and fuzzy" ones. Nonetheless, I may be the first one to have written down a personal observation of what high school sororities and fraternities were all about in the late 1940s in Niagara Falls from the point of view of one who had experienced it all. This is a subject that has bothered me for well over fifty years and I hope you will forgive me for "editorializing" on this very special list. Here goes. I knew full well when I was in my teens in high school that if I weren't accepted into a sorority, I just wouldn't be "socially acceptable." Heaven forbid-a veritable outcast of society!! And so I went through the agony of attending the various sorority functions that I had been invited to and sweated out the outcome of their assessment of me as to whether I would be worthy enough to become a sorority sister. While waiting for the news of whether I had been accepted by at least one of them, I continued to agonize over the dress I had worn at their teas, the hat that I had chosen to wear, the gloves I wore, had my social graces been good enough? The suspense was unbearable but I finally received word that I was accepted by Theta Xi Upsilon. Although it wasn't the most elite sorority at Niagara Falls High School, at least it was quite a respectable one. I was relieved. I was going to be a member of a sorority! Whew!! WOW!! I then became a "pledge" and had to perform many degrading stunts and activities to prove that I was worthy to become a sorority sister of the other members of TXU. That was what pledging was all about and everyone in high school pretty much took it all in stride. If anyone showed up at school looking a bit goofy, it was a sure bet that he or she was a pledge to a fraternity or sorority. None of us pledges were happy with what we had to endure but we knew it was part of the process of initiation and we knew it wasn't the end of the world. However, several weeks after being put through our paces, I began to wonder if it was worth it at all. No it wasn't the embarrassing things we had to do or the humiliation we had to endure, it was something much more important than that. It was the delight that some of the older sorority members took in putting us through all of it. Half of them were down right mean and enjoyed watching us squirm. The only saving grace was that the other half went through only a pretense of hazing us. It was obvious their hearts just weren't in it. But there was one earlier incident that I just couldn't forgive. It was in September of 1946 that I was instructed to write to an acquaintance of one of the sorority members. He was a Canadian sailor aboard the HMCS Stadacoma out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. I was instructed to "write a very passionate love letter and do not tell him your[sic] pledging." His address at that time was 2/C A. M. Smyth. Well, I did. However, I followed up my letter with another one to him and told him everything. This was his response. HMCS Stadacoma, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Sept. 16/46 [shortly after my 15th birthday] Dear Vee, I received your most wonderful letter today. I hope you are well, leaving me the same. When I received the letter I wondered who it could be from. It really took me by surprise when I read the first few lines. You do write the nicest letters. I just hope you will write again. Well it didn't seem so very much of a joke Vee to either of us, at least not to me. You know when a guy is away from home, far away as you put it, and he gets a letter like that, well the first part really picks him up. But to find it was only a joke, it knocks him right down again. I hope you don't mind my writing to you. Maybe we would set the joke right [back] in their faces. So will you write me again soon, please do. The letter is not very good I know and the only way that "I'm out of this world" (remember?) is that they call me Zombie once in awhile! If you write again would you mind sending a picture? I've already fallen in love with your letter. No telling what a picture might do. Thanks again for the (should I say loving) letter. Love , Alan PS. Don't show Norma [she was my sorority sister] this letter, OK? And we' ll have a good laugh on them. This note is sealed. Be sure it is sealed when Norma gives it to you. And so a few weeks after I received Alan's letter and I came to realize that pledging for a sorority was based more on degradation and humiliation than it was in encouraging any sort of positive activity, I just up and quite in the middle of pledging. WHOA, that was UNHEARD of! NO pledge quits! Well I did! I just dropped the school books that I was forced to carry for a sorority member that day and walked off. It set the sorority on its ear. It was obvious that I had been an embarrassment to them but within several days and because of some personal encouraging words from Miss Morrissey, the teacher who was the sorority advisor, I was persuaded to continue. I finished my pledge period, I went through Hell Week, I was initiated and I was inducted into the sorority. As a result of the overall experience, in spite of my eventual feeling of loyalty to the sorority, none of them became close friends of mine. When it came my time to "judge" the new prospective members of the sorority, based on the style of the dress they wore at the time or what hat they wore or what manners they had, or how popular they were with the boys, in spite of my being then only 16 years old, I had already realized that sororities and fraternities had no place in high schools. Although my remaining years in high school were exciting years during which I did my fair share of attending sorority functions and dating various fraternity boys, in the back of my mind I knew that our fraternities and sororities were based on sheer snobbery. There were only two things that were considered for membership-your parents' social standing and how popular you were with the opposite sex. If you made a good score on both points, you were accepted with open arms. Since then, I've become appalled over what I've read about the excesses of college fraternity initiations that involved paddling, excessive alcohol consumption and the like. I must admit I haven't read much about college sorority activities but if they breed the same sort of snobbery as the high school sororities did in the 1940s, well, you know where they learned it-in high school. I know this is a very personal telling of a bit of my past, but I dug it up from my old scrapbook and I'm only beginning to realize the historic value of my scrapbook. There is so much in there with stories to tell of the history of Niagara Falls in the 1940s. Chief Vee, USNR (ret)-the one who has always marched to a different drummer.