Delta Kappa Epsilon - University of Alabama

4 Delta Kappa Epsilon FROM THE HISTORIAN "A PARTY IN PARADISE" THE 1920 DKE CONVENTION-HAVANA, CUBA D uring the Christmas holidays of 1920, 250 DKEs from all over North America, along with a number of their wives, converged on Key West, Florida. A large number of them boarded a Cuban warship that had been sent there from the Cuban capi- tal of Havana at the behest of Cuban President Mario Garcia Menocal, Delta Chi Cornell DKE, 1888. Others in attendance boarded the coastal steamer Governor Cobb and, after raising the DKE flag on the ship's mast, set sail for Cuba. The 76 th Annual DKE Convention was to be held in Havana over the next several days, "as 1920 went out and 1921 came in," hosted by President Menocal himself, who, a year earlier, had personally invited the DKE brotherhood to hold its annual convention in his country, "the Pearl of the Antilles." This was the first time that any North American fraternity had ever held a national (or inter- national, in the case of DKE) convention outside of the con- tinental mainland, and the event attracted much attention from the general public and the press in the United States, Canada and Cuba. This was also the era of Prohibition, which went into effect less than a year before the convention on January 17, 1920, and some cynics floated the pre- posterous (?!?!) idea that the real reason the DKEs went to Cuba was so that they could circum- vent Prohibition and consume alcohol at their convention dur- ing the festive holiday season. Why would anyone accuse DKEs of doing such a thing? A 1921 entry in the DKE Quarterly states: Of course a lot of explaining was necessary in the case of some of those suspicious friends who saw, or pretended to see, a case of cause and effect in recent constitutional tinkering [i.e. the passage of national Prohibition] and a trip of college men to a wet island. It was difficult to convince some of our rivals, whose hearts were overflowing with envy, that we were not of those who now consid- er the United States as a vast and arid desert bounded on the south by an oasis called Havana and on the north by one called Montreal. A New York Times article about the Convention, "D.K.E. Men Off For Cuba," published December 27, 1920, stated: "More than 150 members and officers of Delta Kappa Epsilon left the Pennsylvania Station in a special train last night to visit Cuba at the invitation of Cuban officials, and to attend the seventy-sixth annual convention of the fraternity at Havana. Special trains from other cities will carry delegates, undergraduate members, alumni and guests. All the trains will meet at Savannah, where there will be a reunion of members as guests of Mayor M. M. Stuart and other city officials. Part of the entertainment for the visitors will be an old-fashioned barbeque. President Menocal of Cuba is a graduate member of the Cornell Chapter of the fraternity. He heads the committee arranging for the visit of the Americans, and will provide a Cuban warship to convey the delegates and officers from Key West to Havana. Steamers are to be provided for others and airplanes are to make round trips with passengers. The convention banquet and the President's annual ball and reception at the palace are to conclude the visit. The delegates are due at Havana on Dec. 30." Trains loaded with DKEs left from New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and elsewhere, and the brothers initially convened in Savannah, as stated, where a large group of DKEs from the South and Midwest met up with those coming from points north. From there, more trains took the DKEs to Key West, from where the waiting Cuban navy warship, steamer, and apparently, even airplanes, then still quite a novelty, took them, like visit- ing heads of state, on the 90-mile voyage to Havana. Once in Havana, the DKEs checked into hotels, and the convention then got underway. 1 The entire second floor of the luxurious Hotel Sevilla, a "famous branch of the Biltmore of New York," was secured to accommodate DKEs, and served as the headquarters of the convention. Double rooms with private baths could be had there for $9.75 per person per day. 2 The Psi chapter was represented at the Havana convention by undergradu- ate brothers Robert Hurter Bromberg '21, as a delegate, and Earl Mason McGowin '22, as an alternate delegate. The Convention Minutes do not show the names of alumni in attendance, so it is possible that one or more Psi alumni were in Havana as well. It seems likely that brothers Bromberg and McGowin took trains to Savannah to meet up with the larger DKE con- tingent, and then went south to Key West with them as a group. Brother Bromberg was a proud DKE who spoke fondly of his time at the Havana convention, according to his daughter, Jane Byrne of Birmingham, 1. See A Century and a Half of DKE- The Illustrated History of Delta Kappa Epsilon, pages 47-49, and "This Week in DKE History," entry for December 26, 1920, http://www.dke.org/this-week-in-dke-history/2014/12/22/this-week-in-dke-history-december-22nd-december-28th. 2. "Havana Calls," flyer for the 1920 DKE convention, Psi chapter archives. Cuban President Mario Garcia Menocal, ca. 1912. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.org. Prospectus for the 1920 DKE Convention. Photo courtesy of Grant Burnyeat. (Above) The Governor Cobb entering Havana Harbor. Photo originally published in the DKE Quarterly, Vol. 39, #1, page 8. (Right) The Hotel Sevilla, Havana, headquarters of the 1920 DKE convention. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.com.

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