[12965] in APO-L
Name Change/APO's main principle
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Neal/Molly Farmer)
Sat Oct 14 00:39:26 1995
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 21:36:56 -0700
Reply-To: TheFarm@EWORLD.COM
From: Neal/Molly Farmer <TheFarm@EWORLD.COM>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU>
Dear APO-L,
I pledged APO in 1975, and a few years later then-National President
Pinky Hirsch in Dallas at a national board meeting explained to me that we
are a leadership-development collegiate organization, using service projects
as the vehicle to develop leadership. He said that Herbert Horton (whom Pinky
said he knew) wanted to build a college-aged leadership-development
organization because he saw sailers and soldiers run wild on shore
leave/three-day passes who threw away budding careers of military service
because they couldn't solve their problems without getting into fights, and
were court-marshalled. (Pinky's nickname was such, he said, because he used
to have red hair, but there were too many Red's out there).
At 1979 at a regionals in Austin, the late Earle Herbert explained to me
that leadership development was our most-important function, hence a whole
national committee on Leadership Development.
In 1983, at a Section 40 banquet in El Paso, then-National President C.P.
Zlatkovich reiterated what Earle had said.
In 1988, when I first stepped onto the board as the Region VII director,
Fred Pollock in Kansas City made an impassioned plea (OK, he yelled) that we
were a leadership-development fraternity using service to train students --
we are trained in leadership by thinking of a project, having it voted on by
the chapter, performing the project, making sure all the proper materials are
there at each project, and then evaluating each project, he said.
There are many, many other examples of people I trust pointing out to me
that Horton told them he wanted the direction of our Fraternity to be
leadership training with service projects as our vehicle.
I will go to my grave saying that we are a leadership-development
community service organization using service projects to achieve our goals,
because the only real difference between us and the social Greek
organizations is that we have leadership training. The socials have service
projects (although not on our grand scale); the socials have fellowship
parties (hopefully, we are not on their grand scale); but we boast of
leadership training -- hence our appeal to college adminstrators.
--- Neal Farmer
