The weirdest thing happened this weekend. It reminded me of how fleeting life truly is. On Saturday, I was scanning some slides, a laborious task, and I was shuttling between two laptops. I had my twitter feed open, but really wasn’t reading much. I saw this tweet and I did a double take.
ThetaXi_SEMO @SemoThetaxi
We are deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Brother Dmarcus Huddleston ΓΕ521. He loved @ThetaXi more than anyone and he will be missed.
DeMarcus Huddleston (Photo courtesy of the SEMO chapter of Theta Xi chapter)
DeMarcus Huddleston sounded so familiar. I had to stop and concentrate until I knew why I knew the name. He had come to the Rotary meeting on Tuesday morning. During the meeting, while the election results were tallied, I asked him to tell us a little about himself. After the meeting, I spoke with him for a while. He told me he went to Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO). I didn’t ask about a fraternity, I figured I’d ask that the next time he visited the club. We talked about the Boy Scouts and his job serving as head of the Boy Scout’s Kaskaskia District. He spoke about the effect scouting had upon his life. He was looking forward to becoming a member, and I was enthused by his youth and his excitement about becoming a Rotarian. Our club could use another Eagle Scout. I wrote him a note thanking him for coming to a business meeting and I promised that our meetings are usually a lot more fun than talking about the budget and income projections. I was hit in the gut by the news that he had been in a fatal automobile accident early Saturday morning. What a loss for all of us. My heart breaks for his family and friends.
Another twitter post gave me a link to an answer for a question which has been floating through my brain. Lyn Harris, Chi Omega’s Archivist, posted this tweet and recipe
Looking for a 100-yr-old recipe for your holiday party?! Try this from Ethel Switzer Howard, author of the Symphony
This reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend about the menus of countless 1880s and 1890s events. They all seemed to have oysters on the menu. It just seemed odd considering that these events took place in the middle of the country (the west in those days). Oysters are an acquired taste and one does not find them on many event menus of today. A comment to Lyn about the frequency of oysters on the menu at late 1800 events brought this reply from the Phi Gamma Delta Archivist:
@GLOhistory @ChiOArchives US annual production spiked 1880-1910, making oysters cheaper than meat, poultry, fish. http://spo.nwr.noaa.gov/mfr584/mfr5841.pdf .
And so that answers that! Now we know why those early GLO events had oysters on the menu.
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2015. All rights reserved. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/
