2/4/2003
The 1941-42 school year at the Pennsylvania State College started well for Alpha-Delta, with 18 pledges—the highest number to date. But the academic year was brutally interrupted when the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor with an unprovoked bombing attack that decimated the U.S. fleet in the Pacific.
Comparisons to September 11, 2001 are appropriate only to those who didn’t live through Dec. 7, 1941, and the ensuing multi-front war.
Many fraternity houses became military barracks at Penn State and many men, who had been only six months from launching their careers, put plans on hold and enlisted to defend freedom first.
Records for the class of 1942 may not be accurate, but they show 17 Alpha-Deltas were graduated that year from The Pennsylvania State College. Today, six are unaccounted for (in chapter and Penn State records) and at least seven have gone on to Chapter Celestial.
Richard Warburton Miller ’42 not only survives, but remembers. At age 81, he has returned to Penn State only twice since 1942. The last time he received the PSU alumni association’s 50-year medallion.
“It’s not an award for any activity,” he said. “It’s a recognition in that you’re still alive.”
But Brother Miller is more than just “alive”. He’s a generous contributor to our national Kappa Sigma scholarship fund. He wears Jackson’s Men pin number 1598. (See list of Alpha-Delta Jackson’s Men in this issue.) He’s an attorney and clinical psychologist based in Highland, Calif., near San Bernadino. And he lectures on interpersonal communication.
More than 60 years ago, Warburton Miller was “splitting” tickets to dances at Penn State featuring Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Artie Shaw and their orchestras. He and a date would go to the dance until midnight, then hand over their tickets to a brother and his date for the post-midnight shift.
Total enrollment at the College was less than the 2002 graduating class. Sixty-five cents was a good hourly wage for hard manual labor, and Kappa Sigmas wore jackets and ties at lunch and dinner in the Alpha-Delta house.
Brother Miller remembers frequently wearing tuxedoes for fraternal and college functions, although he never wore tails. The graceful, Southern-style Alpha-Delta house in which he lived was demolished in the early 1960s.
He represented the house on the debating team along with Brothers E.V. Bishoff ’45 and Carroll P. Blackwood ’43.
His Alpha-Delta experience lasted only about 18 months, some six decades ago, but he still recalls roommates [Frank E.] Ted Baldwin ’43 and Ralph Sapp ’42. He says Lloyd Dixon ’42, Grand Master, drove a Lincoln Continental Mark I. That was impressive since few brothers even had cars.
(David M. Thompson ’42 says he used to commute from Bellefonte and never lived in the chapter house. He hasn’t been back to Penn State since graduation and lost touch with the fraternity years ago, but he remembers “happy memories of being a brother and being a part of the scene.” Brother Thompson was a newspaper man for four years starting at the local Centre Daily Times, and then served Presbyterian churches as pastor until his retirement in 1986.)
During the summers, Warburton Miller would work as a gandy dancer (adjusting railroad ties), or busting up old highways with a 16-pound sledge, or as a farm hand. The latter paid a dollar-a-day plus lunch. But that kind of work produced enough income to pay for tuition, books and board for the next year at Penn State.
Although scheduled for graduation in 1943, Brother Miller completed his degree in ’42, then went into the Navy.
His service in World War II made an even deeper impression in memory than his life at Kappa Sigma. He was stationed in the South Pacific aboard one of the first destroyers equipped with radar. Several times each month Japanese planes would attack, and he remembers his crew shot down a few, and sank a submarine.
Since most of the U.S. fleet had been crippled or destroyed at Pearl Harbor, Miller was among a relatively-small contingent in the South Pacific in the early days of the war. There he met Maj. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, leader of the famed Black Sheep Squadron, as well as Lt. Jack Kennedy. The skipper of the famous PT-109, at that time, was a well-liked young man, with an active romantic life (to put it more delicately than Brother Miller did).
While he was away at war, Miller sent home money that his mother used to buy building lots for $500 each in Boalsburg, near State College. About 20 years ago, he sold the last of those for $20,000. After service in World War II and the Korean War, Brother Miller retired as a Navy Captain. Miller and his wife have owned 17 citrus farms over the years.
Brothers who wish to contact Warburton Miller may do so at: 909-881-2786.