Fraternally,

Chip Chapman, "82

​Perge!

Stories, as we all know, are the life of Omega Mu, and they keep alive our Omega Mu spirit each time we see each other, and there is nothing wrong with feeling nostalgic and then saying to yourself: “Did I really say and do these interesting things while living in the house; did all those events occur in the RAM, and did I really look like that during my years in The Castle?” And the beautiful thing is that these events did occur, and you did look like that. The Castle has graced the ground of 79 College Avenue for generations of Omega Mu brothers, and our binding stories were framed within the distinctive walls of The Castle. The stories are delightful, poignant and filled with warm memories. Your stories provide a clear, significant lens in appreciating our long history; second, they provide a broad generational spectrum of our brotherhood and our shared home. That is the power of authentic storytelling, not shallow prattle. Anyway, to be clear, please send me more of your stories. Each story helps each of us to appreciate and love, in new yet familiar ways, our Omega Mu brotherhood and The Castle. Thank you.

Fraternally,

Chip Chapman, ‘82
​
​Perge!

“It was a sunny Saturday in the spring of 1954 when a few of us with dates, went to sand beach at Arcadia National Park.  As I remember, the sand was warm and we spread out some towels and had a relaxing afternoon.  We had some coolers with beer which which made it even more relaxing.  After a while someone had the idea for us to  go into the ocean.  As you probably know, in the spring, at a beach on the coast of Maine, the shore might be warm but the ocean is still very cold.  The plan was for the guys to get in a line and go into the water at the same time.  A few could hardly stand much less run into the water because of the number of beers that they had.   Well, they made it  into the water even though it was very cold.  A minute later everyone struggled back onto the beach stone sober.”

​“I don’t recall what time of year the IFC sing was, but we participated in that too. Something I don’t think Phi Gam had done in ages. After a couple brief rehearsals, here’s what the performance went like. There was a pretty good sized audience in the gym with risers in front and a main a isle down the middle. Other competing greeks waited back stage for their turn. We waited in the lobby. When we were announced, we marched down the center aisle, dressed in white shirts, dark pants. We lined up on the risers with Mike in front as conductor. He raised his hands to begin, paused, and we all whipped out dark glassed and put them on. Then, in loud and not very melodic voice, we sang Country Joe’s “Vietnam Song” which I recall calling the “Vietnam Rag”. When we finished, we took off our glasses, put them in our pockets, and walked out the way we had come in. I think we got some enthusiastic cheers, but there were lots of stunned faces too. It was sweet!”

​“Suddenly a flourish of brain cells seem to have kicked in and I recall a bunch of stories that will take me a while to get down in writing: stealing a real pig for Pig Dinner, how to kill a pig (no one knew), the infamous Fiji Island fire on Baker Island (1968, I think), Freak-out parties.  How we pulled ourselves together to escape from social probation under the leadership of Michael O’Leary by suddenly cleaning up our act and participating in all the goody-goody activities that were expected of a “good” fraternity:  the snow sculpture of a drunk driving accident designed by “the spook”, our artistic brother, complete with red-dyed snow representing blood, participation in the IFC sing performing “The Vietnam Song” by Country Joe and the Fish:
 
“Well come on all of you big strong men, Uncle Sam needs your help again,
he got himself in a terrible jam, way down yonder in Vietnam,
put down your books and pick up a gun, we're gunna have a whole lotta fun.
 
CHORUS
and its 1,2,3 what are we fightin' for?
don't ask me i don't give a dam, the next stop is Vietnam,
 
and its 5,6,7 open up the pearly gates. Well there ain’t no time to wonder why...WHOPEE we're all gunna die.
 
now come on wall street don't be slow, why man this's war a-go-go,
there's plenty good money to be made, supplyin' the army with the tools of the trade,
just hope and pray that when they drop the bomb, they drop it on the Vietcong.
 
CHORUS
 
now come on generals lets move fast, your big chance is here at last.
nite you go out and get those reds cuz the only good commie is one thats dead,
you know that peace can only be won, when you blow em all to kingdom come.
CHORUS
 
(spoken)- “Listen, people, I don’t know you expect to ever stop the war if you cant sing any better than that... theres about 300,000 of you fuc|ers out there.. I want you to start singing..’
 
CHORUS
 
now come on mothers throughout the land, pack your boys off to Vietnam,
come on fathers don't hesitate, send your sons off before its too late,
be the first one on your block, to have your boy come home in a box.”

​“I was in the pledge class of 1969 and one night after the library closed we abducted Van Dyke and his girlfriend as he was walking her back to her dorm up on the hill. The plan was to keep them hidden away until morning when they would be released and we, the Zobies, would be safe from paying any penalty for the act. 
 
We first took them to a summer camp located east of Brewer where we planned to hide out for the night. Unfortunately it was a bad plan because it was January and the place wasn't insulated and we couldn't get enough heat out for the stove to warm the place up. So then we decided to head back into Brewer and rent a room at a local motel. 
 
We picked Dick Stacy's Motel located on Route 1A at the edge of town in Brewer. Everything was good. We had heat and it was the middle of the night and we hadn't been discovered yet so we all thought we had it made. The next thing you know, the door explodes into the room followed by a bunch of shouting "Zobies, get back to the house right away!" as they grabbed VD and his girlfriend and sped off. 
 
We were so stunned that we didn't realize the there were only a couple of them and 15 of us and we could have just grabbed them if we had had our wits about us. The element of surprise did us in and we paid the price for the rest of the night. It was a zoo, if you know what I mean! ‘Thank you, Sir! May I have another?’”

​“No tale about life in the house would be complete without reminiscing about time spent in the Ram.  The Ram was one of the few spaces in the house that the general populace rarely saw or even knew about, yet it was a vital element of the overall house experience.  Remember the horror on your mother’s face as you showed your parents where you slept for that obligatory parents’ weekend tour?  “Why are the windows wide open?” “Would that ladder really work?” “Why are there no alarm clocks?” “Do boys bring girls up here?”  “It’s not really…….that clean.”  But to those of us that got to experience the privilege of spending most of our non-waking moments embraced by its exalted, dark wood partitioned, and often frigid walls, it was an experience like no other.”

​“Fresh air.  Up until more recently, in this energy conscious/climate change fake news, were the windows in the Ram ever closed?  Does anyone recall if there were even working windows?  No matter how cold, no matter what kind of weather, it didn’t matter and I suspect all would agree it was the best sleep you ever experienced to this day.  The more blankets and sleeping bags the merrier and who washed their sheets in the year. The cold took care of any critters.  I distinctly recall Brother Wallace snoring away in the Mental Ward, directly beneath the end window, as snow blew in and built up on his slumbering carcass.”

​“Psycho”.  Did you ever see the movie Psycho, are you a fan of movies that instill mental terror?  They had nothing on some of the pranks pulled by Brother Shaboski.  Shab rarely slept, he was too stressed out by schoolwork and a host of other mental quirks, so he’d perpetually be up into the wee hours, after we’d all retire to the Ram.  His favorite victims were Brother Hannan and Brother Emmons.  Of particular note, and his escapades were many, was when he waited patiently for hours underneath Hannan’s bed for Phil to come up and go to sleep.  Waiting even longer he then suddenly reached up from beneath the bed and grabbed Phil. Now Phil had his own late night demons so when he finally fell asleep and was grabbed, his screams of terror were enough to wake up the Zeroes next door.”

​“The RAM is the
Territory of mystery in
Omega Mu, the place of
Fables and legendary 

Pranks, and not the 
Light fairy-
Tales of the brothers’
Grimm. Oh
 
No. “It was
No paradise
Of innocence”
Like Grimm’s
 
Fairy Tales
Because once
You put your name on
The desired time nail
 
To be waked up in the
Morning, you had to be
Philosophically,
Emotionally, and 

Psychologically
Alert when you
Opened the
Creaky door and felt the
 
Descending cold
Rush of air as you
Ascended, feeling the
Curious ethereal yet
 
Emotionally inert
Quality of the
Numinous realm of 
Static-un-time with
 
The guiding
Principle of
Unknowability in the
Mythological

Black Hole
“Singularity” of
Omega Mu’s
RAM when the 

Nocturnal tocsin of the
RAM sounded for
Simple and true
Terror and humor
 
Activities that would
Commence, with no
Program notes to prepare
The wary or unwary as to
 
What might happen on
Any given night in
Rooms filled with generational
Memory specters amidst the
 
Miscellany of broken
Furniture, RAM-
Shackled bed frames,
Mattresses, piled junk, and
 
Strewn clothes, and benefacted
Goods from previous
Generations of brothers,
Creating a brisk dynamic inter-
 
Generational commerce
Free of the dollar signs
When brothers would
Cometh to the RAM To
 
Receiveth, “Each according
To his needs” – Ah, Marx!

Papers, books, clothes,
Sporting equipment, and a
Farrago of didactic and
Erotic literature, 

A classic Stones album,
Sticky Fingers, a Woodstock
Ticket from a ’68 - ‘71
Brother, and a condom
 
Or two, but only
one brother was caught
Caught in flagrante
Delicto in the RAM
 
With his girlfriend,
Poor Paula.
But at night, after you
Ascended the stairs and
Opened the door and
 
Entered the woody, dusty,
Fibrous smelling
Darkness of the RAM,
Every clear-headed, no-
 
Nonsense nocturnal
Impulse was displayed by
Brothers full of complexities
And compulsions from placing
 
A dead bear in a brother’s bed in ’56
To Shab, mad craftsman and
Weaver of many RAM
Spells, putting Phil into
 
Spluttering anticipatory
Paroxysms of fear and
Trembling and years of
Psychoanalytical treatment
 
To cleanse his blighted,
Scarred subconscious
Soil of Shab to regain
Approximate human sensibility.
 
But it was the cheerful,
Unchecked verbal
Galaxy and rippling
Threads of humor of this

Mythically unique
Place because it induced
Amiably indulgent thought
And
 
Creativity in unfastened
Conversation of pure
Mysterium absurdum from
The “Mental Ward” –

With their Mao led
All-or-nothing magical
“Fantasia” of delicately
Complex theatre-stories,
 
His fictive personae,
Of high dramatic verse of
Romantic smuttiness and
Baroque emotionalism, a

Well-worn Mao track of
Habit, with the jesting
Echoing response of gentle-
Souled incredulous laughter
 
Of  Hicksy, Bart, Jughead,
Gar, and Rocky, echoing
Down the dusty
Corridor by the

Zobie room with their
Eyes half-closed-open,
Their onion pearl
Dangling around their
 
Neck, their tasty trademark,
Their troubles fully alive,
Waiting at the edge of their
Magical mystery,
​
Murmuring, nervously,
Wondering when
Molten-eyed brothers would
Descend upon them and hellish
 
Hopelessness would begin,
Stiffening their resolution of
Will to prevail and become
Brothers…”

Fraternally,

Chip Chapman. ‘82

​Perge!

Roy F. Stevens, ’10
William R. Ballou, ’12
Ira M. Bradbury, ‘14
Horace H. Towle, ’14
Anthony Percy Schneider, Jr.
William H. Knowlton, ‘17
John I.B. Sawyer, ’17
Willett C. Barrett, ’18
Everett H. Brasier, ’18
Ernest L. Coolbroth, ’18
Robert B. Dunning, ’18
Earle R. Adams, ’19
George H. Cheney, ’19
Clifford P. Gould, ’19
Willis G. Martin, ’19
Evans B. Norcross, ’19
Earle S. Peckham, ’19

Fraternally,

Chip Chapman, ’82
​
Perge

Fraternally,

Chip Chapman, '82

​Perge!

Fraternally,

Chip Chapman, '82

​Perge!

The idealism and optimism of the previous decade became a receding memory with each bank failure, mortgage foreclosure, and failed business. However, the full degrading articulation of the Great Depression would continue until the start of World War II. For most American citizens it was a strange, frightening time, full of human struggle and pain, and everything in American society was affected by the deepening instability. However, the impact upon the state of Maine, on the whole, was not that different from what most “Mainers” had experienced for some time: “Mainers who lived through the Depression often recalled that they were already so poor that they didn’t even notice it. In fact, many Maine industries were already suffering before the impact of the stock market crash began to reverberate through the rest of the economy.”
 
In the midst of this severe chronic depression, an uncertain future, a catchy, upbeat song, “The Maine Stein Song,” was recorded by a former University of Maine student and S.A.E. fraternity brother, Rudy Vallee and his band, The Connecticut Yankees. It was the number one song in the United States for ten weeks for good reason. It pushed back against the growing despair and hopelessness that was only increasing in the United States. Rhythmically and melodically, it gave cause for optimism, if nothing else. It evoked nostalgia of a better time, a time apart, in the United States, in a silly yet meaningful way, during a time that was always anxious and tense. It lifted the veil of despair with its emotional intensity cheeky lyrics, if just a little. This, in part, is one way that music has impacted people through history. The “Maine Stein Song” certainly fulfilled the spirit of Robert Frost’s statement about poetry in when he said it was a “momentary stay against confusion.”

Separate and distinct from that, historically speaking, it is the only time that a university song was the number one song in the United States. And, fraternally speaking, Rudy Vallee often sang Phi Gamma Delta songs over the radio to an appreciative American audience. In lyric and melody, discouraged Americans were lifted by songs about the University of Maine and Phi Gamma Delta. After an intramural basketball game against Beta in 1931, the brothers returned The Castle for a meal, and while they were eating “The Maine Stein Song” started playing on the radio, and the brothers stood and raised their glasses and started singing with impressive Omega Mu pride. As we all know, this is not an exaggerated instance: we still do this now. Raise the Steins

In the minds eye of many people, the incongruence nature of what was occurring, compared with the pulsating nature of the nineteen-twenties, was like drinking a cup of hemlock and dying painfully, spasmodically, over an extended period of time. Those were the harsh realities of the world for many in the nineteen thirties, and everyone was impacted in some way, and it was not a socratic, noble death for some higher cause, virtue, or salvation. It was an uninvited, long-suffering pain for twelve years that would begin to end only with the start of World War II. Dorris Kearns Goodwin encapsulated it best when she said it was “No Ordinary Time.” The good life that most had known was temporarily eclipsed, but the resurrecting presence, voice, and words of President Roosevelt, if not his economic policies, would determinatively lead America through the day-to-day economic brutality of the Great Depression after he was elected President of the United States in 1932.
 
Life could not have been wholly pleasant for our Omega Mu brothers during the Great depression, it would be a delusion to think otherwise. However, the privations they experienced were, certainly, far fewer than most, but they certainly existed. The noisy bustle in The Castle continued, and the brothers did whatever was necessary for The Castle. Like every previous generation of Omega Mu brothers, they knew that there was no on-off button of responsibility; they did not retreat from past successes; they only looked forward to doing it again in everything they did.  The events of ’24-’25 were still fresh for them, and they knew that The Castle was a generationally rich gift and inheritance for them and all brothers in the future, and for that they were unabashedly proud to be living in The Castle with its dark woodwork and plush leather chairs and couches in the library and living room. The daily attire was a little more formal with shirt, tie, nice slacks, jacket, blazer, or sweater

Meals were served in the dinning room on the long wood tables, and the talk and limerick-readings, as usual, were lively and laughter-filled, and the irrepressible wit and rich embroidery of stories and sagas and anecdotes were smile-inducing. Whimsical fraternal pranks in the RAM were common, many of the brothers were involved with various musical groups on campus, and they would, at times, sing in the house with the accompaniment of our piano. The brothers had wonderful formal and informal dances in The Castle, on many occasions with an orchestra, and this would continue until the early Sixties.

​In addition, their was an initiation banquet for the newly initiated brothers that was quite elegant in the early Thirties. 

To say the least, their life in The Castle was very comfortable, as it was for each of us, an enduring moment in our life. The brothers continued to fare well with in all athletic, artistic, civic, and intellectual affairs. Winslow L. Jones and Harry Moyer were  initiated  into  Tau  Beta  Pi, the national honorary engineering society. William Roche was a star on  the varsity debating team. Neil Calderwood was initiated into Delta Pi Kappa, the honorary musical society. William Bratton was elected editor of The Prism, and he was inducted into the honorary journalistic society, Kappa Gamma Phi. Neil Calderwood was admitted into the musical society, Delta Phi Kappa. Frank Hagan was admitted into the education society, Kappa Phi Kappa. Bill Pond, Fred Roberts, and Silas Bates were initiated into the honorary engineering society, Tau Beta Pi. Norman O. Porter was elected editor-in-chief of the Campus, the position that Otto Swickert held two years earlier. William Roche was initiated into Phi Sigma, the honorary biological society. Stanley D. Henderson, house president, was nominated for consideration for consideration as a candidate for a Rhodes Scholarship, and he was the star pitcher on the University of Maine baseball team. 

Graduate brothers regularly visited the undergraduate brothers in The Castle and provided them with encouraging words for success were Dean Paul Cloke, Dean James N. Hart, Alpheus C. Lyon, Frank Fellows, Raymond Fellows, and Theodore S. Curtis. Ted Curtis played a significant advisory role in the building of Memorial Gym in 1933, and in the following year he became Omega Mu’s Purple Legionnaire, and he coached the ski team. The Mount Vernon House, the last Q.T.V. chapter house, burned down in 1933.

The undergraduate brothers were in good hands with the presence of these graduate brothers as they helped them assume responsibility for the continued well-being of the chapter because they confronted challenges and carried things through to achieve success. They were each unique, remarkable men, and they had a single-minded commitment to health and well-being of the undergraduates brothers and The Castle. Their feelings were strong for all things Omega Mu, and that spirit never slackened, and their generosity of time and money was renown, in clear continuity with our past. Their presence showed that our Omega Mu fraternal bond, in historical range and richness, is lasting and deep of heart: an imperishable gift. It revealed that the manner of life in our brotherhood was a generational community of brothers who continue to care about each other and The Castle, and as such, underscoring the proud vigorous spirit of “Not for college days alone.”  Everything these graduate brothers did faithfully reflected what Newton D. Baker wrote about the nature of fraternity.

Harry E. Sutton, ’09, was the first University of Maine alumni to receive the Pine Tree Fiji for outstanding service to The University of Maine General Alumni Association. James M. Eaton, ’10, was a prominent leader in the aviation industry, and in the Thirties he made aviation history when he established the Ludington Line that provided airline service between New York to Washington, D.C.

The Department of Interior named a crater in honor of brother George P. Merrill, 1879, in 1933. ​

During their spare moments, the brothers listened their combination radio-phonograph and were aware of everything that was occurring in American culture. The musicians that the brothers listened to were remarkable: Count Basie, Artie Shaw, George and Ira Gershwin, Lawrence Welk, Guy Lombardo, Cole Porter, and many others.

The songs that they heard over the radios or on the jukeboxes that were in every bar or pizza joint were “Mood Indigo,” “In a Sentimental Mood,” “Let’s fall in Love,” “Stormy Weather,” “I’ve Got the World on a String,” “Too Marvelous for Words,” “They Can’t Take that from Me.” They would also have heard the promising voice of a singer by the name of Francis Albert Sinatra in 1939 who was making a name for himself, and who would influence the singing careers of Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Dinah Shore, and Doris Day.

In the world of sports they would have read or heard how West Virginia beat Cedarville College 127-0 in football in 1932; that Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson were the first five baseball players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936; that War Admiral won the Triple Crown in horse racing in 1937 and then lost to a charging Seabiscuit in the 1938; that the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 1939, and that Lou Gehrig played his last game on April 30th, 1939. Certainly they would have gone to see the smash hit movie in 1939, The Wizard of Oz, and while they were out they may have purchased the first copies of Superman and Batman comic books, or John Steinbeck’s powerful novel of the Dust Bowl, The Grapes of Wrath, or As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner.

Together, in The Castle during the turbulent, anxious decade of the Thirties, our Omega Mu brothers flourished. Smiling and laughing, good-natured and full of fun, our Omega Mu brothers had an unparalleled fraternal life within the most charming architectural shape, form, and space of our beloved Castle during the Thirties. They lived and grew in self-confidence, personally, fraternally, civically, athletically, and they established friendships that endured for life. Their fraternal life was replete with joy and gladness, happiness and good cheer, which is as it should be. The hardships they endured were real, and no doubt they flinched a little at the privations they experienced due to the depression, but it certainly was not a hardscrabble life. They maintained a fraternal attitude that was comic, committed, reminiscent, ribald, ritually reverent, and connective. Line by line, word by word, ritual by ritual, enthusiasm to enthusiasm, smile by smile, it was bracing and honest: a lifetime treasure. That is the seedbed of Genius of Omega Mu, our rich Omega Mu heritage, that we can all agree upon. The Castle, then as well as now, is a warm and well-loved presence in all of our lives regardless what the nature of the world was in each decade. For the brothers living in The Castle during the Thirties, the world order they knew would change, once again, at the beginning of the next decade, and it would be an equally nerve-raking, complicated decade as the economic jumble of the Great Depression. Our chin-up and chin-forward attitude would continue as we entered the Forties.

Globally speaking, in the face of both evils of Germany and Japan, America had maintained an isolationist approach toward the complicated and diabolical events that had occurred in Asia and Europe, but on December 7th, 1941, at 7:49 AM, that primal energy would be unleashed on the United States by the Japanese when Lieutenant Commander Mitsuo Fucida ordered his pilots to bomb Pearl Harbor, shouting to them, “Tora, Tora, Tora.”
 
In his memoirs Fucida wrote:
 
“One hour and forty minutes after leaving the carriers I knew that we should be nearing our goal. Small openings in the thick cloud cover afforded occasional glimpses of the ocean. . . . Suddenly a long white line of breaking surf appeared directly beneath my plane. It was the northern shore of Oahu. Veering right toward the west coast of the island, we could see that the sky over Pearl Harbor was clear. Presently the harbor itself became visible across the central Oahu plain, a film of morning mist hovering over it. I peered intently through my binoculars at the ships riding peacefully at anchor. One by one I counted them. Yes, the battleships were there all right, eight of them! But our last lingering hope of finding any carriers present was now gone. Not one was to be seen. It was 0749 when I ordered the attack. [The radioman] immediately began tapping out the pre-arranged code signal: “TO, TO, TO . . .

​The next day America’s isolationism ended when President Roosevelt declared war against Japan and Germany, and with fraternal commitment and enthusiasm, many of our brothers would soon be in uniform fighting in the European and Asian theaters of war with fortitude and resolution, proudly so.