By Courtney Kochuba (DC'07)

As dusk falls at the Chesterfield Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla., the fraternity brothers recall their jungle-themed college party that took place nearly five decades ago. To them, it seems like yesterday when they convinced a pet store owner to let them borrow a squirrel monkey. For the bash, the animal was situated in a deluxe cage and was a big hit. Then came morning and the need to return the four-legged guy.

Art Yaffe (E’62) reminds his old friends of his courage. “That monkey wasn’t eager to leave such a nice cage, so I reached in and grabbed him! He turned his head and nipped me between my thumb and forefinger. I had a clear impression of his teeth on my hand.”

Others at the table howl with laughter at the recollection.

Plenty more recollections are shared at the unofficial Beta Sigma Rho reunion. The Carnegie Mellon alums joyously share stories about their lives since graduation more than 40 years ago. And quite a few wear smiles when they compare themselves to their college yearbook photos, which each wears as a form of nametag.

Amid the reminiscing, Yaffe and Al Weingarten (E’62, P: DC’89) pause to take it all in. For the past six months, they tirelessly planned to make this October 23-25, 2009, weekend event possible. It was May 2009 when the two men lunched with another classmate, Alan Kornfeld (E’63). Monthly lunches with Beta Sigma Rho alums living in or visiting Florida had become a tradition, nine years running. Near the end of that afternoon, Kornfeld told the others that his doctor had placed him on the heart transplant list. But he had battled back from ill health before, and his friends convinced themselves that he would be fine this time, too.

Two days later, Kornfeld died. “I can’t describe the impact he had on my life,” Yaffe says softly. “It was so good to have a buddy close by.”

In mourning Kornfeld’s passing at his funeral, Yaffe and Weingarten started to mull over the decades that had passed since their graduation. When one name came up, that of Leslie Cohen (E’62, ’64, ’66), they recalled his suggestion of a Beta Sigma Rho reunion. Yaffe and Weingarten agreed that it was time. “We talked about how none of us were getting any younger. If we were going to do it, we needed to do it now,” Weingarten recalls. “And that’s what got us going.”

They immediately got to work—setting the date for the festivities to take place in just six months. Targeted classes would be 1959-1965. Weingarten assumed the role of hotel point person and financial organizer. Yaffe dug deep into fraternity records to locate alums’ contact information, then fired away with inquiry emails. When email addresses weren’t readily available, Cohen got on the phone to alums all over the world to get their email addresses.

By early July, Yaffe and Weingarten were wary about the final outcome. After all, it had been nearly half a century since some of these alumni had seen each other; would they travel to Florida to reconnect? Their invitation list included about 100 names, but Yaffe and Weingarten decided that 20 reserved rooms and 40 meals per evening was more than enough—likely an overestimate.

On July 8, Weingarten received the first check. Soon after, he received another, then another. Confirmation emails started pouring in from Pittsburgh, New Mexico, even Israel. As the event drew closer, the Chesterfield Hotel added room after room to the Beta Sigma Rho party. Finally, the hotel sold out its remaining availability, tallying 38 rooms for the reunion. The total count culminated in 74 attendees (42 alumni), including Kornfeld’s widow. “It really speaks to the camaraderie of the fraternity that exists to this day,” Weingarten says.

When the reunion weekend finally arrived, that camaraderie echoed throughout the events. From the Friday arrival buffet, when the number of guests exceeded the room’s capacity, to the Saturday sit-down dinner, which featured fraternity-themed blue and yellow centerpieces, stories of their college days took center stage. “It was the best kind of nostalgia,” Yaffe says. “We had a lot of fun.”

Perhaps the real success was that before the weekend was over, alums were already discussing the next reunion—which, with the added efforts of Barry Friedfeld (E’64), came to fruition last October at The Colony Hotel in Palm Beach. The second gathering attracted 12 new alums, giving Beta Sigma Rho a combined total of 54 brothers at both reunions.

However, alums didn’t have to wait two years until Beta Sigma Rho entered their lives again. Shortly before the first reunion, Ira Shapiro (S’62) brought up an idea to Yaffe and Weingarten: to design a booklet that would hold bios and photographs of alums. The end result was a 100-page, spiral-bound book, rich in reunion and artifact photographs as well as detailed biographies of many of the alums. Designed and assembled by Al Gorelick (A’58, P: A’84), the book was printed and mailed to more than 100 alums by Andy Merson (PM’62, Former Trustee, P: DC’95), who is president of Command Web Offset printing company. Weingarten and Shapiro contributed with editing.

Today, Yaffe and Weingarten continue their monthly lunches. But now their reservations grow to as many as a dozen people when Merson and other alumni are in town. A third reunion may be on the horizon, but Yaffe and Weingarten have already decided they will turn the reins over to an eager group of planners—the fraternity brothers’ wives.

Courtney Kochuba (DC’07) majored in creative writing and was a fifth-year scholar at CMU. She is a regular contributor to this magazine.