41
like Jack Lawsen. Well, that flabbergasted me. So I wrote
to Dean Riley right away, and sent perhaps my first airmail
letter in history. We didn't use airmail very much in those
days, I asked him for a financial report of Blue Key. Prior
to that, just prior, he had asked me to be a member of National
Council of Blue Key. My name was there along with Joe Roeamer
from Peabody and other names over the country. That had gone
out to Blue Key members, and this National Council of Blue
Key had been established. I didn't know what was back of it.
I had accepted the appointment and was very proud of it, and
I was promoting a chapter and here it was being called a
racket. I wrote to Dean Riley; I didn't get a reply. I
sent a registered letter and didn't get a reply. I sent
a telegram; I didn't get a reply. I wrote to Ed Price; Ididn't
get a reply. So Iwent back to Professor Onstandt and I said,
"Professor Onstandt, Jack Lawsen must be right. I can't
get any information at all about the finances of Blue Key. I've
been trying." I told him what I had done--showed him copies
of my letters and telegrams. So I dropped it. This was in
1935, I think it was.
In 1936, I came back to Florida to visit my parents, but I went
to Gainesville specifically to find out why Ed Price even
wouldn't answer my letters. I saw Ed and I asked him if I
could stay with him and he agreed. He said, "Well, we saw
your name on the list of DeanRiley's council, and we
considered you a protege of Dean Riley." Well, in a way
I was a protege, I guess. At that particular time I was
trying to get information, the local chapter was rebelling
and they were investigating Dean Riley himself. You look
at things through the years a whole lot more charitably then
you do right at the time, and I still don't forgive Dean
Riley completely.. But his defense to Tigert, who was then president,
was that he had taken the money and had reported to all the
chapters, I think we had about twenty-five chapters of Blue
Key, that the money had been invested in a bulb farm in Florida
real estate. He had a place over in Waldo where he was growing
bulbs, I remember seeing it some years later, and he invested
a lot of money in it. It went under, and in bankruptcy he lost
money. He never did explain to Blue Key that the thing had just
folded up. I don't know much more than that except that that
was the episode in Blue Key that I was involved in.
P: And the Florida chapter then became Florida Blue Key.