Ladd Harris' Fraternity

Last Friday, on our way back from our trip to Maine to visit Cousin Paul at Jim & Mary's home, we stopped to visit, for the first time in my life, the campus of the University of New Hampshire at Durham, NH. It was an unplanned visit, so I had not brought with me one piece of information which I wished I had - the name of the fraternity which Shirley's brother, Ladd Harris, was a member of when he attended UNH back in the 1940's. My recollection is that Ladd entered UNH in 1940 or 1941 - he was was born in 1922 - and his education was interrupted when the US declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor, and Ladd enlisted in the Navy. He resumed his education after the war, and I think he graduated in 1948. I don't know when he joined the fraternity, but probably when he was a freshman. I remembered that the fraternity had two Greek letters in its name, and we found ourselves on fraternity row, and there was Kappa Delta, and I thought, "maybe that's it," and took a photo of it. Well, it wasn't it. When I got home, I looked it up, and it was Sigma Beta, which is evidently not a national fraternity, but has just one house - at UNH. It is a big house. I knew I had a photo of the house, taken by Ladd himself, I presume, back in the 1940's when Ladd was there. I found it, and I found Sigma Beta's website, and a more current photo. The house hasn't changed much. If I had had that old photo with me last Friday, I might have gone up to the door, introduced myself, and asked if I could come inside. I don't have any idea if they keep records of former members, or maybe even have group photos of each "class" hanging on the walls like some places do, but I could ask. I might do that the next time we go to Maine. The campus is very close to Route 4 which we take over to Portsmouth, NH., so it would not be much out of the way. Anyway, here are the photos, the 1940s one (the car in the foreground gives it away), the more recent one (in full color), and one of Ladd and Shirley, taken probably in the 1940s, but at Lake Winnepesaukie.

Ladd and Shirley*************************** This all has added significance because I have been gathering photos of Shirley into a file of almost 80 photos of her from various times of her life, and that file will become a slide show that we will use at an event on May 21st that will be held at the Guilford Church in memory of Shirley on the 25th Anniversary of her death (May 24, 1998). More on that later! And on top of that, I just received from Jim Harris, Ladd's younger son, a movie of Shirley that he created using old home movies he has kept from the 1950's and 1960's. Jim will not be able to be there on May 21st - he and his wife, Joy, will be on a trip to Europe - so he sent this movie that he made sort of in his stead. The scenes in the movie are almost all from Lake Winnepesaukie, and he also created a narrative for it, a poem written by Shirley in 1956, titled "Together," which he reads, and a music track from La Bohème, which Shirley loved. It is quite touching. Here are three frames from the movie:

The opening frame of the movie, Ladd hugging Shirley at the lake.

Betsey, Shirley and John, taken at our house in Vermont just after we had moved in.

Ladd Harris with his infant daughter, Patty Ann, at the lake.