The following article gave me goose bumps when I found it. I just love the Internet for finds like this. This was one of the essays I wrote as APO-Philippines national editor/media relations director (1975-81). The article also went under the title “An unaffected APO.” As background for the use of the words “affected” and “unaffected,” I’ve included the letter (please see attached and below) my APO-Eta March 1975 ball date wrote. Please note the word “brod” or “brods” was already being used that year — some 40 years ago. Thanks to Brod Bernie Castillo for posting the March 1977 edition of the APO-Eta newsletter, Lightbearer, which featured the letter on Page 8.
Here goes as updated for today’s readers:
AN OPEN LETTER
My Dear Friends:
“It’s Greek to me,” we say when something unfamiliar comes our way. When we read in the newspapers and become aware of one thing, we think that that’s all there is to it and say, “I am knowledgeable about it; I read the newspapers.”
Such is my situation. Newspapers, in their desire to get more readers, resort to sensationalism — yellow journalism at its worst.
I am literally Greek, but not at all unfamiliar. Rather, according to commercial historians — the newspeople — I am notorious. Hazing. Rumble. Even drug addiction. What have you. They have alleged against me, not really without basis. But have they stopped to consider who really I am?
I am ALPHA PHI OMEGA. And I stand for LEADERSHIP, FRIENDSHIP, and SERVICE. Dr. Frank Reed Horton, my father, conceived me as an organization of college men who have cooperated with youth movement, especially Scouting. I was born on December 16, 1925, at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, USA. I am now 89 years old. Almost a million Americans from 738 campuses in the United States alone believe in me.
In the Philippines, I am relatively young. Eagle scouts brought me to this home. On March 2, 1950, I was sort of born again at the Far Eastern University with Dr. Librado I. Ureta as my Filipino father. You see, I am independent here from APO-USA. I now dwell in 336 chapters and many petitioning groups in various Philippine colleges and universities and have 294 alumni associations throughout the country and around the world.
I am the biggest Greek-letter organization of the Philippines, please permit me to say. I have more than one hundred thousand members at home and abroad. My Filipinos members include both men and women.
I specialize in what I stand for — LEADERSHIP, FRIENDSHIP, and SERVICE.
My service program covers humanity, divided into: student body and faculty, youth and community, nation, and fraternity brothers and sorority sisters.
I admit that not all men and women are affected the same way by a given institution. That’s why my being implicated in notoriety is with basis.
A National Executive Board, composed of people who have real faith in me, runs my affairs. With the full support and cooperation of brods and sis in my collegiate chapters and alumni associations, my ideals are becoming a reality.
After all, I am a very dynamic organization. I am ALPHA PHI OMEGA INTERNATIONAL SERVICE FRATERNITY AND SORORITY — APO for short. More than a million citizens of the world believe in me. It is my hope their belief is unaffected.
Sincerely,
ALPHA PHI OMEGA
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