talk about a flashback...

My buddy Steve (the engineer) sent me this photo, from when we were in school. The caption says it's the 1980 Homecoming Court, but it's actually the 1979 court:

Let's see, I don't know what happened to Gerry Stagg. If I remember, he was a fraternity guy, but not mine (Lambda Chi Alpha). "The Unknown Candidate" is a fraternity brother of mine. He and my friend Steve (the lawyer) were sitting around our house and came up with this idea. They wanted to run around with paper bags on their heads for an afternoon, and the thing snowballed from there to the point where Grant ended up on the court. The Queen, Jocelyn, was nominated by one of the black fraternities, Alpha Phi Alpha or Omega Psi Phi. The greek system was (and still is) pretty segregated. Charlie Tomeny was also a fraternity brother and a cheerleader. He passed away young, in his twenties. We were a homophobic lot at the time, and Charlie caught a lot of crap from the guys when he came out, but nobody wanted to see him get HIV.

Suzanne was the sister of another Lambda Chi, and she was an Alpha Xi Delta. She was dating a nother of my brothers at the time. That spring, her boyfriend got shot in an armed robbery at his dad's business. It happened the day before our fraternity formal, and she decided to go anyway. We always held a party at someone's house before the dance, and that year, my girlfriend offered her parents' house, since it's a great place to entertain a group. (That girlfriend is now my wife. :-)) It was still a rough evening for Suzie, and I spent a lot time walking up and down the block, talking to her and letting her cry it out, much to the chagrin and annoyance of my date. Tommy Russo, can't remember if he was in one of the other fraternities or not. Check out that shirt! Ana was a Sigma Kappa, and eventually married a guy I went to high school with. AnnaLisa was dating the guy who was SGA President at the time of this photo. They broke up and she started dating another brother of mine, whom she eventually married (and I think is still married to). George (her b/f at the time) counted the ballots for the court election himself. I don't think he wanted to rig things to be queen anyway, but it would have looked really bad had he done so and knocked off the first black queen in the school's history. Still, we did learn a lot about elections involving ballot boxes that spring.

Those were some fun days. I was the "legal aid" ombudsman for SGA that year (78-79). We had a program where a student could come to the ombudsman for help, and if s/he thought their situation warranted it, we had an attorney who would come meet with that student, and SGA would pay the attorney's hourly fee for a consultation. The lawyers gave us a good break on the hourly in the hope that they might stumble on a good PI case. I was also a member of the "election council" with George, and we supervised the SGA elections that spring. It was a hotly contested race, with three white guys and one black guy as candidates for President. One of those candidates was another of my fraternity brothers and a good friend. He won, what a coincidence. :-) That started all sorts of grief, since it was the first time a black candidate mounted a serious campaign. His supporters suspected fraud when they lost.

The judicial branch of SGA was called the Honor Council. They decided that there was no fraud, and we were very grateful to two fraternity brothers of mine, my girlfriend, and another guy who would have been a Lambda Chi had he not been pre-med for that decision. :-)

Ah, good times!