Fraternity Sneak
submitted by: H. Roice Nelson, Jr.
-111.8467319 40.7650729 1968
I was in a fraternity. To give you an example, one of the rituals of being a pledge was to see if the pledge class could steal an active member of the fraternity and hide him for 24 hours. No pledge class had every accomplished this. The rules were you had to hide notes telling where the next note was, and had to call in where the next note was located every hour, in case the Active Members were not able to find the notes.
Our plan was simple. I was dating Judy Iowami, who was a University of Utah cheerleader, and the little sister of one of my fraternity brothers. She arranged for her brother to come up to Ballif Fall (image 1) to meet her. I recruited the Freshman Football Team to be in the lobby and to grab Ken Iowami. We would hid him at a campground up one of the canyons close to the Fraternity House, within the allowed radius from the University. We went to other places, within the allowed radius, and recorded background noise (the airport, and other places with distinctive background noise). Ray Gardner, my friend from Cedar City who went to the University of Utah with me, was living with a relative a block from the fraternity house on 1300 East. We had the tape recorder set up by the phone, so we could call in the next clue with the appropriate background noise. Clues I remember include one taped on top of a greased flagpole at a South Salt Lake Elementary School, in a locker at the Salt Lake Airport, in the Student Center on campus, out by Bingham Copper Mine, etc. The idea was to send the Active Members from one side of the valley to the other, while Ken was being fed marsh mellows at a camp a couple of miles up the canyon from the frat house. Good plan, poor execution.
When Ken came to Ballif Hall, he recognized the trap, he threw me, my foot landed on the cement and broke a bone. We did get him. Football players were a lot bigger than a little Japanese guy. The next problem is we had not explained to Ray's relative what we were doing. He thought we were trying to impress girls, and he told us to put up all of the equipment and quit it. We kept Ken for 24 hours, the Active Members declared we broke the rules, and we did not get the promised dinner. I had to do a lot of push-ups, with a broken foot. Went down to Dr. Mcfarlane, who was the Doctor who treated Grandpa Hafen when he got a very aggressive form of leukemia from being a down-winder, and had an x-ray. Nothing he could do for the break, and told me to just stay off it. Oh well! He also told me about the aggressive cancer cells in Grandpa Hafen's system, and how he had never seen anything like it before or since.
As part of our penance (hazing) for "breaking the rules" on the steal, there was a lake where the dam had broken and there were thousands of carp dying. A local radio station requested help saving the carp, and we sent a team to collect carp in a big bucket, and I was responsible for helping sneak them into the Student Commons and placing them with the goldfish pond there. We did have some fun!