Great T-Shirts I Have Known II

Great T-Shirts I Have Known, part two…

Col­lege, Fra­ter­ni­ty Life and more.…   (1975–1979)

When I arrived at Wake For­est, I found a wel­com­ing home with the Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty — via the Inter­Var­si­ty Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship. It was an easy tran­si­tion, and one I prob­a­bly need­ed to help me through my first year of col­lege. I remained focused on that com­mu­ni­ty through­out my Fresh­man year and into my Sopho­more year. Slow­ly, though, cracks in that com­mu­ni­ty, and the dark­er side of fun­da­men­tal­ism, led me away from “the God Squad,” which was the nick­name of the par­tic­u­lar group of young men I had end­ed up shar­ing a suite with my Sopho­more year.

It is iron­ic, and inter­est­ing to me that I did not save any­thing from that peri­od. I am sure there many items I might have saved, but noth­ing remains of that phase of my life, save some good mem­o­ries and a few pho­tos I have kept.

At the begin­ning of my Junior year, I moved into a suite with an eclec­tic bunch of peo­ple, and elect­ed to room with a high school friend, Steve Trent. It was a fresh start in a way, and one I wel­comed. I was still try­ing to fig­ure out “who I was” at that point, but, like my ear­li­er incar­na­tion, I think that I need­ed it at the time. Like it or not, I still felt like I need­ed to “belong” some­where. Look­ing back, I think was def­i­nite­ly search­ing for a place in the world that made sense for me.

I became friends with a bunch of guys who were mem­bers of Delta Kap­pa Epsilon, a sort of semi-out­cast fra­ter­ni­ty at Wake For­est. It was the only off-cam­pus fra­ter­ni­ty, and was there­fore not offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized by the uni­ver­si­ty. All the oth­er fra­ter­ni­ties were housed in the cor­ner units of each of the men’s “hous­es” as the dorms were called.

I pledged DKE my Junior year, and it was a big part of my last two years of col­lege. Iron­ic that, when I came out, just after grad­u­a­tion from col­lege, I felt I had to give up all those rela­tion­ships. To say they were homo­pho­bic, even for the time, would have been an extreme under­state­ment.

I don’t hold that against them. Over the years, I’ve even recon­nect­ed with a cou­ple of them, and the t-shirts I saved from those years are still dear to me though, and remind me of the amaz­ing fel­low­ship and mem­o­ries I have from those days.

So I moved to Atlanta, and start­ed an entire­ly new phase of my life. I did not go alone, though.

I moved there with Chris Creech, a fra­ter­ni­ty broth­er of mine who had also come out, and in fact, who intro­duced me to some peo­ple who would become some of my dear­est friends for the rest of my life.