Inspired by Levi Fox’s article about the case for joining a Jewish fraternity in the winter 2025 Lion, I saw many similarities to my own situation. Graduating from a public high school in Chicago in 1965 that was 92% Jewish, the majority of my classmates opted to attend either Michigan or Wisconsin. In fact, only one other Chicagoan even came to Indiana. I had initially decided to enter an all-male dorm when the AEPi Master, who lived just two blocks from my house stopped by and invited me to attend a pledge dinner. That evening changed my life.
Instead of moving in all alone to the dorm, I found myself on a cot in the attic of an old house with 25 other freshman pledges. Our fraternity was first on campus academically and usually last in most sports, like Indiana’s famous Little 500 bicycle race. There were 56 brothers in the house, 55 of whom were Jewish.
Two years later we would move out of that attic and into a brand-new house. For those two years we had to be on our very best behavior, so as not to incur any penalties which could delay our entering our new abode. We all sacrificed quite a bit of usual undergraduate social life, to make sure that this happened and the constant pressure from our Master David Adler and Past Master Don Levin made sure we did.
To this day several of my pledge brothers are still among my best friends. This was especially valuable in the several years after I graduated. I began teaching school in the inner-city of Chicago which meant I was free to travel every summer. As I traversed across America, I could always stay with brothers, whether in Boulder, Colorado; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; St. Louis, or Boston. As brothers we had developed relationships, at least as deep as with our own physical brothers.
Several years ago, we held a reunion back in Bloomington. We visited our first house for the memories and then went and visited our chapter, nearly 40 years after first moving into our new house on North Jordan. The thing that really hit me was the quality of the brothers at the reunion, far beyond any national averages, for career or family success. Several brothers were still married to their college sweethearts, while the incidents of divorce were negligible. My roommate at the reunion was the President of the Anesthesiologists of America, another was the Head Psychological Counselor at Johns Hopkins University and others were doctors, lawyers and successful businessmen. I mean the successes of these Jewish men in their 50s and 60s was incomparable to any national average. And, myself, I went on to get two Masters Degrees and a Doctorate.
You know, they say that even an antisemite still wants a Jewish doctor or a Jewish lawyer.
It’s now 60 years since I joined AEPi and I can only think of the zillions of positives that I gained in my life by doing so.
Bruce Sutchar has been a successful businessman and Government Employee. He has been married for 43 years, has 5 college educated children and eleven grandchildren. He is a successful author, teacher and world traveler. Still in Chicago, Bruce can be reached at [email protected].
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