Who remembers HS fraternities on LI? (Hempstead, Freeport: to live, gangs, clubs)
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https://www.facebook.com/pages/Frate...14&ref=profile The Baldwin Burger King Brawl was the finale for many; all because of some homie named Billy Sandoval who apparently beat the living S**t and then some out of some teen member of Baldwin Omegas, literally fracturing the homie's skull so bad that blood and brain fluid leaked all over the bloody parking lot. Fred Gross-a member of Oceanside Alpha Omega Theta goes into detail in his book-Fraternal Brotherhood. I've read it twice last year.
Freeport, Omega Gamma Delta, Delta Gamma Rho, still around in the early eighties. Alpha Sigma Phi disbanded in the late 70's. Every frat had a paddle!
Alpha sigma Phi Did not disband in the late 70s. They went on as a street club into the year 2000. Valley stream north was the last remaining chapter and the last standing out of all the frats. Some members of Alpha sigma Phi started Mc club and are called the black and Red, they have a large club to date...
Patchogue HS had ...the purple jackets fraternity and the gray & black sweater one...in the 1961-1966/67..cant remember names....always had "hell night" upstreet !
Long post for a long forgotten thread. But if anyone's out there....
I vividly remember fraternity presence in Freeport in the late '70s/early '80s: the two principal ones who had a "rivalry", Delta Gamma Rho (green-on-black colors) and Omega Gamma Delta (yellow/black). and the then-new one, Alpha Theta Epsilon (white/black). They'd strut around high school hallways in their similar cloth "letter" jackets, all-black with the fraternity color piping the shoulders, with the designation on his back: the 3 greek letters spelled out and placed in a triangular formation. A-T-E was the newest one, scrappy, whose initiates were physically smaller than the other two.
The NYT article portrays them as simple and harmless, a community of jocks. My Freeport experience was much different. Not all bullies and a-holes joined the fraternities. But all fraternity members were bullies and a-holes, to a person. They were the people who didn't excel (academically) at school (you wouldn't catch a fraternity member taking an AP course), who were predominantly from lower-middle class backgrounds (which seemed to be a basis for their tribalism/territoriality). [To be fair, when I say "bullies", I generally mean "former bullies." Bullying, as such, only seemed to exist in grades 6-9 or so. By high school, the bullies have matured out, or been socialized enough, or have established a reputation by intimidation, to "just" be a-holes.] Of course, they were the smokers (in their defense, this was the '70s, and there were a lot of smokers). I almost forgot: they were exclusively white and racist and kept so by blackballing.
The article makes it sound like there was some semblance of community participation, akin to college fraternities. These high school fraternities were just gangs (albeit not in the sense that one gets from that word in recent years). They had parties. They spraypainted their signs everywhere. "ΔΓΡ" and, to a lesser extent, "ΩΓΔ", were plastered all over the town, in the color of the fraternity, often in prominent places like railroad trestles. What a way to "give back" to the community.
The one thing that makes the brutality and intimidation of these fraternities seem almost quaint is: there was no lasting injury. They didnt carry weapons (certainly not guns). They did drugs (marijuana, only) but they didnt deal, as such. They graffittied their letters, but you didn't ever hear about anyone being wounded (or shot). They dealt in fists only, which, when considering MS-13 and the machete incidents in Suffolk, I guess, is something.
Regarding their membership, the exception that proved the rule, for me, was when I heard of a classmate who had tried to be initiated. He would have been an outlier at this fraternity: he was a high achiever, from an upper-middle class household, was in no way a bully, was widely popular in school, played varsity hockey but also excelled academically (and later went to Brown and is a Wall St trader). Sure, he came to school with facial bruises from the fraternity initiation-- but he was blackballed. Which seemed to demonstrate what the selection criteria for these groups are: that guy was "too good" for them. He was popular with the jocks and the a-holes and the brains. So they beat him up and then one (or more) denied him membership out of envy. He was too successful for them. [And No, I am not that Wall St trader.] IIRC, the same thing also happened to a widely popular African-American guy, except then the collective wisdom was that he was blackballed principally because of racism.
Long post for a long forgotten thread. But if anyone's out there....
I vividly remember fraternity presence in Freeport in the late '70s/early '80s: the two principal ones who had a "rivalry", Delta Gamma Rho (green-on-black colors) and Omega Gamma Delta (yellow/black). and the then-new one, Alpha Theta Epsilon (white/black). They'd strut around high school hallways in their similar cloth "letter" jackets, all-black with the fraternity color piping the shoulders, with the designation on his back: the 3 greek letters spelled out and placed in a triangular formation. A-T-E was the newest one, scrappy, whose initiates were physically smaller than the other two.
The NYT article portrays them as simple and harmless, a community of jocks. My Freeport experience was much different. Not all bullies and a-holes joined the fraternities. But all fraternity members were bullies and a-holes, to a person. They were the people who didn't excel (academically) at school (you wouldn't catch a fraternity member taking an AP course), who were predominantly from lower-middle class backgrounds (which seemed to be a basis for their tribalism/territoriality). [To be fair, when I say "bullies", I generally mean "former bullies." Bullying, as such, only seemed to exist in grades 6-9 or so. By high school, the bullies have matured out, or been socialized enough, or have established a reputation by intimidation, to "just" be a-holes.] Of course, they were the smokers (in their defense, this was the '70s, and there were a lot of smokers). I almost forgot: they were exclusively white and racist and kept so by blackballing.
The article makes it sound like there was some semblance of community participation, akin to college fraternities. These high school fraternities were just gangs (albeit not in the sense that one gets from that word in recent years). They had parties. They spraypainted their signs everywhere. "ΔΓΡ" and, to a lesser extent, "ΩΓΔ", were plastered all over the town, in the color of the fraternity, often in prominent places like railroad trestles. What a way to "give back" to the community.
The one thing that makes the brutality and intimidation of these fraternities seem almost quaint is: there was no lasting injury. They didnt carry weapons (certainly not guns). They did drugs (marijuana, only) but they didnt deal, as such. They graffittied their letters, but you didn't ever hear about anyone being wounded (or shot). They dealt in fists only, which, when considering MS-13 and the machete incidents in Suffolk, I guess, is something.
Regarding their membership, the exception that proved the rule, for me, was when I heard of a classmate who had tried to be initiated. He would have been an outlier at this fraternity: he was a high achiever, from an upper-middle class household, was in no way a bully, was widely popular in school, played varsity hockey but also excelled academically (and later went to Brown and is a Wall St trader). Sure, he came to school with facial bruises from the fraternity initiation-- but he was blackballed. Which seemed to demonstrate what the selection criteria for these groups are: that guy was "too good" for them. He was popular with the jocks and the a-holes and the brains. So they beat him up and then one (or more) denied him membership out of envy. He was too successful for them. [And No, I am not that Wall St trader.] IIRC, the same thing also happened to a widely popular African-American guy, except then the collective wisdom was that he was blackballed principally because of racism.
Unless you had friends in them. Delta saved my butt once.
In West Hempstead we had 4 main “Frats” and one “Club”. Alpha Nu Theta, Omega Gama Delta, Alpha Sigma Phi, Delta Lambda Phi and Sports Club. In Island Park you had Gents, Dukes and Chapters of the other gangs previously mentioned. They were in their heyday from 1974-1981.
Jesus that is like a terrible 80s HS movie come to real life. Its like West Side Story. Oh man, LI must have been horrible place to grow up in truly. I have cousins who were children on LI in the late 70s, early 80s. They claimed to suffer so much racism, they begged to move to Manhattan Chinatown.
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Fraternities in Freeport, LI in the late '70s
