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was comfortable enough and it certainly did the trick for us for the next four years. Also, it was very handy to the university, the Applied Science College being about three minutes walk from our place.

XXI

And so we come to the opening of my college career in September 1920. It was not altogether a happy one because of the fraternity situation and this led from one thing to another in a manner of which I am not at all proud but which I propose to record as it was. It covered practically my whole time in college and I wish I had it to do over again as I'd have done it differently. My father had been a fraternity man, having become a brother of Phi Delta Theta at Wofford College and later a member of the Syracuse chapter when he came there for his medical work. So there had been little doubt in my mind that I'd be rushed and bid by Phis, particularly since this was my father's chapter here. Well, I was rushed all right but I got no bid. I as rushed also by the Dekes and the Psi U's, Fritz Barker having recommended me to the Dekes, he being one. I didn't even come close with either of them; in fact, I can remember yet the evening the Dekes called to pick me up to take me to the house for the rushing party. The brother who called was Charles Chapell, an alumnus and scion of the Chapell-Dyer dry goods domain, who drove up to 205 Waverly Avenue in a 12-cylinder Packard touring car and when I got into the car, he said, "Where do you live?" And I said, "Here." And he said, "I mean where are you from?" And I told him Syracuse and this was my domicile. I'll never forget his absolutely amazed question then; he said, "Do you mean that you live HERE?" Well, he took me to the rushing party but I'm sure if there had been any graceful way to drop me out of the car on the spot, he'd have welcomed it. Guys like Charles Chapell just weren't interested in the slightest in boys who lived in places like 205 Waverly Avenue unless possibly they were obvious All-America material or something similar, and I was all too plainly no athlete. I was obviously a relatively poor boy, no athlete, no pusher, no personality boy, no nothing that was attractive to the several fraternities who rushed me which also included Beta and DU. So I had to accept this very bitter pill and go on with my college career as a non-fraternity man -- for the next two years, at least, and then I did something I've regretted ever since. I forced myself into Phi Delta Theta. I'll tell that story when the time comes. I'm not at all proud of it. A postscript to the Chapell story occurred in  June 1946 when we went to Buena Vista for Bab's graduation from Southern Seminary. Among the proud parents there to witness their daughter's graduation, was Charles Chapell and 26 years hadn't changed him a great deal. Needless to say, I didn't go over and embrace him and remind him of the good old days at S.U., of which I think he was ^[[by]] then a trustee.