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L: I wanted to get up to that. The student body held a fraternity
meeting in Atlanta the following spring 1926, and there were
two boys, one from the University of Alabama, president of the
student body, and the other one who was an officer of his
fraternity in Auburn. They saw my keys and both of them
wrote to Dean Riley, and chapters were established at
Tuscaloosa and Auburn. So Dean Riley gave me the credit for
establishing three-chapters. I presided at a banquet of
Blue Key at the White House Hotel at the time Ernest Mason was
taken into the fraternity, I remember that. He'd been on
campus about seven years, and I introduced him as a "Century
Man," he came from Century, Florida. When I explained that he
was a "Century Man," it's not unusual for attorneys to take
more than four years to finish college. Well, then I went to
Syracuse and Chicago, and was out in Denver when a group on
the campus was considering some kind of an honorary, social
service group. I had a friend in that group who'd been
a graduate student and was an instructor in accounting, and
I told him about Blue Key, I'd wore my key there, and so they
became interested in Blue Key. They organized to get permission
from the university administration to become affiliated with
National Blue Key. My friend's name was Jack Lawsen, Dean of
students and also a professor of political science, who taught
in the same department. I was not officially a member of the
department, but I taught political science courses.
P: Lawsen was dean of students?
L: He Was Dean of student affairs, a professor and, later, chairman of the
political science department. I think this perhaps may have kept me from
getting a regular appointment as a member of the political
science department. I had promoted Blue Key.
P: Let me go back just one second. Lawsen, you say, was chairman
of political science?
L: Yes, at the University of Denver, and also dean of students.
P: I just wanted to be sure I got that.
L: He was an outspoken person, but a good person. We
never did disagree very much, except that he was Republican
and I was Democrat. He called a meeting on Blue Key. I wasn't
there, but one of my friends on the faculty was there, the
advisor for the School of Commerce. Well, that's where I was
teaching most of the time and also taught out on the campus.
He said Jack Lawsen called Blue Key a G.D. racket, except he
didn't use G.D., he spelled the words out. That would be just