What? Oh, Yeah. Happy Holidays to you, too.

In October, 2009, I attended a reunion of my college fraternity, fellows of Beta Sigma Rho at Carnegie Institute of Technology between 1959 and 1965. (Soon after 1965, the fraternity house burned down and BSR was absorbed by another fraternity and CIT became Carnegie Mellon University.) I had had no contact with the vast majority of my former fellows (brotherhood is an accident of birth - fellowship is by choice) and very little contact with a few since graduating in 1963.

Two fellows had been on the Board of Directors of CMU and had access to school records; there were 132 fellows from 1959 to 1965; 17 are deceased; 98 of the remaining 115 were found and contacted; 40 attended. Many attendees posted autobiographies on a BSR web site within myfamily.com (like facebook) and so did some who did not attend.

CIT was primarily a school of Engineering and Science, but there were also schools of Music, Art, Drama and Printing Management, as well as general studies. For the E&S attendees, a typical career path was: an advanced degree in Engineering or Law or an MBA, with several PhDs; a climb up the corporate ladder; formation of his own company; and now, semi retirement and consulting.

We turned out to be an interesting group. There are, for example: two Fulbright scholars; two Presidential appointees during the Clinton administration; two architects; the Chancellor of the University System of Georgia; a Doctor; an Ophthalmologist; an inner-city teacher who races Corvettes; a politician (not the elected type); a Real Estate investment banker; a card dealer at a hotel in Atlantic City; an entrepreneur; a director at a Playhouse in South Florida; owners of printing companies; a Jewish professor of Literature at a Catholic University in Texas; the CFO of the NYC Municipal Transit Authority; an expert in Cyber-Security; a photographer and photography teacher (not me); a lawyer who was Chairman of the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board during the time of the Louima police torture scandal; a businessman who flew from his home in Tel Aviv to attend; and, one who did not attend and whose entire web bio was, “Over the last 35 years I have been working in Haiti, helping others”.

And me, called by the SF Chronicle, “computer geek by day, sex photographer by night”.

Some who were jerks in school are jerks today. Several who did not impress me at Tech went on to have impressive careers. Many of the fellows participate actively in charities, especially Jewish ones. BSR was predominantly, but not exclusively, Jewish, because most of the CIT fraternities were white Christian by covenant at that time! Two of my former fellows who attended are black.

I had “confessed” to being a sex photographer in my bio at myfamily.com. Five of the 40 attendees told me they had read my bio, visited my web site and liked my work. Some others quizzed me about how I got involved in sex photography. No comments on my earring, which was the only one.

(Of the five roommates I had at Tech, three hitchhiked across the country after graduation!)