THE DIAMOND OF PSI UPSILON .-^"-�* v\> 'An ..�"Tj NOVEMBER, 1948 VOLUME XXXV NUMBER ONE Carl Carmer, Psi '14 Psi U Personality of the Month QmjfufdojnL dnnounjcsimsmL DIAMOND CLUB APPROVED BY CHAPTERS� TO BE INSTALLED FEBRUARY 26TH IN ACCORDANCE with General Resolution No. I adopted by the Convention of 1948, the Executive Council re ferred the petition of The Diamond Club at Northwestern University to each of the twenty-eight Chapters of the' Fraternity. Each of the Chapters has reported to the Coun cil that it has voted on this petition, and that the vote was afiBrmative. The Diamond Club will accordingly become the twenty-ninth active Chapter on the Roll, with the name Epsilon Omega. The installation will take place on Saturday, February 26, 1949, the banquet being held at the University Club of Chicago. Brother R. Bourke Corcoran, Omega 15, is Gen eral Chairman on Arrangements. Attendance at the banquet will be Ihnited to 450. Brothers wishing to attend should communicate at once with Brother Corcoran at 223 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago 6, Ilhnois. All tickets to be paid in advance�Alumni $7.50, Undergraduates $5.00. The Diamond of Psi Upsilon OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF PSI UPSILON FRATERNITY Volume XXXV November, 1948 Number 1 AN OPEN FORUM FOR THE FREE DISCUSSION OF FRATERNITY MATTERS IN THIS ISSUE Page Diamond Club to Be Installed 1 Psi U Personality of the Month 3 New Member of the Executive Council 5 The Archives 6 Names in the News 7 The Psi Upsilon Scene 12 John Falkner Ahndt and Company Wins Advertising Award 15 The Chapters Speak 16 In Memoriam 22 The Executive Council and Alumni Association, Officers and Members 32 Roll of Psi Upsilon Chapters and Alumni Presidents Cover III General Information Cover IV EDITOR Edward C. Peattie, Phi '06 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON THE DIAMOND Albert C. Jacobs, Phi '21, Chairman Herbert J. Flagg, Theta Theta '12 Oliver B. Merrill, Jr., Gamma '25 J. J. E. Hessey, Nu '13 Walter S. Robinson,. Lambda '19 A. Northey Jones, Beta Beta '17 LeRoy J. Weed, Theta '01 (ex-officio) (ex-officio) ' Publication Office, 450 Ahnaip St., Menasha, Wis. Executive and Editorial Offices Room 510, 420 Lexington Ave., New York 17, N.Y. Life Subscription, $15; By Subscription, $1.00 per year; Single Copies, 50 cents Published in November, January, March and June by the Psi Upsilon Fraternity. Entered as Second Class Matter January 8, 1936, at the Post Office at Menasha, Wisconsin, under the Act of August 24, 1912. Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Paragraph 4, Section 538, Act of February 28, 1925, authorized January 8, 1936 PSI U PERSONALITy OF THE MONTH Carl Carmer, Psi. '14 By Albert J. Elias, Upsilon '46 was a time when people were ginning of his research into folklore and THEREconvinced it should be Cramer. The legend and was published in 1932. Critics man still has his troubles with telephone called it remarkable for its "skillful ma operators, salesgirls and the uninitiated. nipulation of the ballad form and for the But the others, majority, which means economy and clarity with which the mono practically everyone who has been doing logues told a succession of curious and de any reading in the past three decades, lightful folktales. It was about people- now know that the author's name is quite people observed with unsentimental sym Carmer� rightly spelled Carl Carmer. pathy." And in that way created an un For surely Carmer has worked in more derstanding of them. media than almost any other top-flight Carmer has fought continually against American writer. As a writer of books he ignorance and intolerance�his bond to a has turned out the best-selling Stars Fell circumscribed group is quite naturally, on Alabama, Genesee Fever, and The then, far less strong than his bond to the Hudson�as well as The Submarine Stur principles of the country in which he lives. geon, Deep South, and Listen for a Lone In the eloquent Taps Is Not Enough, a some Drum, to which he is now writing a dialogue in verse in which the Unknown sequel. He has composed for magazines Soldier of the Second World War is and newspapers and has been an editor memorialized, he muses: of Vanity Fair and Theatre Ark. He has "You cannot call this world a of worked in radio, dramatizations place peace preparing Because there are no wars�not while men of historical events for the intermission of work the N.Y. Philharmonic broadcasts as well For less than a living wage; not while men as for transcription, and creating the more find memorable Taps Is Not Enough for broad Too often they are judged among their fel cast on V-E Day. Carmer lectures, too, lows and in 1944 delivered the annual Cooper By color of their skins and not by texture Of their not while men starve to Union Lincoln address. He has been presi minds; death dent of the Authors' Guild and is now While others waste their food; not while men over the of presiding Poetry Society rule America. During the war, he gave his With purchased power. This man who lies to and time the armed services abroad for somewhere his and service" "Outstanding conspicuous Across the seas, what is his color now?" was rewarded with enviable citations and from the O.W.I. the Treas When he undertook the series of broad recognition , ury and War Departments, and the Na casts dramatizing American history it was tional War Fund, to name only a few. because he thought American history had Before seriously taking pen to paper and been taught too narrowly. "If America having received degrees from Hamilton is to take her proper place in a world and Harvard, Carmer succumbed to the society, we have to understand how our teaching profession, as had his mother history was influenced by the things hap and father. He taught creative writing at pening across the water. As one of my Syracuse, Rochester and Alabama univer characters in the series says at the very sities and it was in Alabama that the beginning, 'Maybe people might have a started to write. better idea where they're going if they young professor actually " for some His first book, a, volume of poems called know where they've been.' Also, Deep South, written in the language of years Carmer was a director of the Ameri the southern backwoods, marked the be can Civil Liberties Union and when it �3- 4 THE DIAMOND OF PSI UPSILON came to expressing how incensed he was over the treatment of Lillian Smith's It seems that whenever a boy is born Fruit in he described Strange Boston, aptly to the Carmer clan, my old friend, Jim it as "a new and very dangerous form of Carmer, tells me that on the birth suppression" of an author "as fine and certificate is a clause that states the idealistic a citizen as we have." Shortly boy must go to Hamilton College and before that incident he further displayed must join Psi U. If you don't believe this then how can account for these how all-inclusive is his desire for fair you play vital statistics?��<i. by fighting to keep in New York City what 1. Ernest Psi '80 the Mayor and the License Commissioner Myron Carmer, 2. Willis Griswold Carmer, Psi '85, were with and high-handed meth "illegal brother of Myron Ernest Carmer ods" to out� fighting keep burlesque. and father of He first earned his as a writer in living 3. James Sykes Carmer, Psi '03, and New Orleans, working on the Item-Tribune 4. Carl Lamson Carmer, Psi '14 and running a press. It was here in New 5. DeLand Carmer, Psi '31, son of Orleans, where he had come from the James Sykes Carmer, Psi '03 University of Alabama, that his first, 6. John C. Carmer, Psi '36, grand son of Ernest Psi though privately printed book was pub Myron Carmer, '80 lished�a collection of poems about the 7. Ernest Carmer, II, Psi '38, in which he lived, French Town. Myron city of Ernest Carmer, His have almost grandson Myron writings invariably Psi '80. been about the places in which he has lived or in which he has done research. A book may grow out of his preoccupa tions or, on the other hand, it may be and occasionally expects his wife to serve planned well ahead of the writing. He him even his dinner there. does research for discovery as well as for Carmer, a man of 54 years, has other, immediate production. He goes by no not quite so worldly passions. Movies, for formula or work habit to determine under instance, appeal to him even when they which circumstance he will create. Genesee are bad; he finds them at theh worst ex Fever was an historical novel about a part tremely funny. He likes Scotch whiskey, of the country where he had grown up and eight hours of sleep, tennis, dancing ("Ball about which he knew much. The Hudson, room and not ballet"), harness racing, on the other hand, involved research and playing cook on Sunday. His chief indul personal contact. For three years he gence: books and clothes. His chief ambi roamed up and down the Hudson Valley tion: "To write more and better than I do." visiting public hbraries and historical asso All in all, Carmer has a real grasp of ciations, talking with everyone from shad America�a country where Carmers first fishermen to President Roosevelt; swap appeared in 1650.