Meeting up with Michael Shamberg years after our wild college days.

Michael and I were in the same ZBT pledge class as Harold Ramis, the actor, writer, and director who was in Ghostbusters, Stripes, and many other movies. Harold also cowrote Animal House, which my son believes was based on our fraternity experiences in the 1960s. It was in part but, according to Harold, it was also based on an amalgamation of hundreds of other true and apocryphal stories from many other fraternities and colleges around the country.

During Hell Week, our initiation period, our pledge class became a close and cohesive group of brothers. We had a lot of fun playing pranks on our older brothers in the ZBT house. Once, we told them about a “stag” party supposedly happening in another town about fifty miles away. Of course, when they got there, they quickly realized we had fooled them and returned to campus, fuming mad. By then, we had left for the University of Wisconsin in Madison for a weekend party with the ZBT brothers there, but not before locking some ducks in the house and “redecorating” the house with eggs. When we returned Sunday night, our brothers punished us by forcing us to cage the ducks, clean up the house, and observe and record duck behavior for several hours over two days.

DURING MY FIRST YEAR AT WASHINGTON, I enrolled in electrical engineering courses and continued to identify classmates who would let me copy their notes. Fortunately, many of my engineering professors were not native English speakers, so they wrote their own notes on the blackboard, section by section, from wall to wall, and back again to the first section, which they would then erase and begin again with the next section. Instead of copying notes from a classmate, I could copy them from the board and use my textbook to follow their lectures. I also took required courses in liberal arts—English, literature, history, economics, philosophy, math, and science—and copied notes from my classmates.

After the first semester, my department chair, Dr. Lloyd “Bob” Brown, called me into his office. He was concerned about my performance in the Introduction to Electronics course. He indicated that he realized I had a problem following his teaching in class. “But I think you could do better, Alan,” he told me. He offered me two options: get a D in the course and move on to the next course in electronics or take an F and repeat the course. After we discussed the pros and cons, I ultimately decided to go with the F and repeat the course in the spring semester. As a result of my increased concentrated studying, I did very well and got an A. I also did well with the rest of my coursework in the electrical engineering program. I will never forget how kind, yet firm, Dr. Brown was with me, and I learned a great deal from him. Giving a student a second chance has stayed with me throughout my professional life, and I have come across many students who deserved and got a second chance from me, be it with their coursework or their behavior.

IN MY SECOND YEAR, Michael, Harold, and I moved to the ZBT fraternity house off campus, home to many parties and a launching pad to many university events. Vicki, who was in her last year of high school, attended parties at the house, where the brothers were always welcoming and friendly to her. Naturally, she made a great impression on everyone who met her because of her confident, warm, and bubbly personality. There was some recurring awkwardness, though, because every time I needed to make a date with Vicki, I had to ask one of the brothers to call Vicki’s mother to make plans. I had no choice. Back then, there was no way for me to contact Vicki directly.

As I had at Morningside, I worked part-time at Washington University as a busboy in the dining hall. Two deaf female students attended Washington during my time, and both were friends of Vicki. The three of us often got together to chat as I wiped down tables and stacked clean plates and bowls into the dish caddies. Two other deaf students were commuters and took courses on a part-time basis while working full-time.

On Thanksgiving Day, we went to my grandparents’ home so that I could introduce Vicki to them. We sat in their front room on the sofa, and my grandparents asked about Vicki’s family, St. Louis, and her school. They knew Vicki and I had been dating for three years already.

“You must stay for dinner and eat!” my grandmother said as we were preparing to say our goodbyes. She grabbed my arm and looked up into my face imploringly.

I tried to explain that we couldn’t stay long, as we needed to get back home for Thanksgiving dinner, but my grandmother was determined that we should stay, sit at her dining table, and eat all the food she put before us. So, we stayed and ate and ate.

When we finally got home to my parents’ house, Vicki and I were so stuffed that I had to tell my mother that we couldn’t eat anymore.

“What? You ate already? It’s Thanksgiving!” She was furious, but she kept the dinner warm for us, and we ate it later that evening. I still chuckle every Thanksgiving when I think about my job chasing turkeys, although it clearly didn’t change my Thanksgiving eating habits.

That holiday week, I took Vicki to all my favorite places in Sioux City, including my junior high and high schools, Grandview Park, my old newspaper route, and Coney Island Weiner for hot dogs. I told her that I normally ordered three hot dogs for myself and encouraged her to do the same. “No, way! I’ll have just one,” she said, and so I ordered four hot dogs. After Vicki finished her hot dog, she asked if she could have another one. When she finished her second hot dog, she asked if I could get her a third one. After that, each time we went to Coney Island Weiner, I’d order six hot dogs—three for Vicki and three for me!

Vicki and I traveled to Sioux City again in December 1964 to celebrate Chanukah with my family during my first-semester break from Washington University. On our first night there, I told her a white lie—that I didn’t want to get engaged until long after I finished college and settled in a job. Vicki said, “Oh, okay.” I could tell she was disappointed but scared to come on too strong by expressing her dismay. I felt half-bad for making her suffer, but the other part of me was gleeful at the prospect of surprising her. Would she be happy if I proposed very soon, just when she was getting used to the idea of waiting through many more years?

The morning after my white lie, I had a meeting with my Uncle Victor, the brother of my late Uncle Bill, who had given my parents a loan for my education at CID. I wanted to get Uncle Victor’s advice on finding an engagement ring for Vicki. My parents knew my plans and were thrilled with what I was up to, and they kept it quiet so that Vicki wouldn’t know. Uncle Victor took me to one of his friends who was a professional jeweler, and I was shown black velvet trays filled with diamond rings. I knew Vicki preferred an oval cut, but I was attracted to the marquise. I vacillated between the oval and the marquise, and the jeweler suggested that I take both of them and show Vicki the marquise first to see if she liked it.

With the rings in my pocket, I drove to the nearest Woolworths, a five-and-dime store, and bought a pink teddy bear. I threaded a ribbon through the marquise ring and around the teddy bear’s neck and put it in a small paper bag. My plan was to walk up to her with the unremarkable paper bag, which looked like it might hold a sandwich or some baseball cards, and then pull out the pink teddy bear, which she would understand was a gift for her. Then she would see the beautiful diamond ring and know that I was asking her to be my wife.

I walked through the front door of my parents’ house with the paper bag clutched in one hand, my heart beating hard in my chest. I looked around but didn’t see Vicki. I had expected that she’d be at the dining room table or in the kitchen with my mother. I found my mother alone in the living room.

“Where’s Vicki?” I asked.

“She’s napping in your bedroom,” my mother said, her eyes bright with excitement. She glanced down at the paper bag in my hand and smiled.

I went to my room, and there was Vicki, sleeping on her side, on top of the covers, her hands tucked under her cheek. I sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for her to wake up. She stirred, opened her eyes, and asked right away, “Did your meeting go well?”

“Yes,” I said, handing her the plain paper bag. She sat up, opened it, and looked down into the bag. I pulled out the little pink teddy bear to give her.

“Cute!” she said with a little smile. “Thank you.”

“Look again,” I said. When her eyes landed on the ring hanging from the ribbon, she smiled uncertainly and looked up at me.

“Is it real?” she asked, to my dismay. Couldn’t she see how the diamond sparkled?

I said, “Look again and more carefully.”

Pulling the ring closer and turning it over in her fingers, she got a better look. Our eyes met again, and hers were full of such hope and love—a mirror of my own feelings.

“Really?” she said. “I thought you said we wouldn’t get engaged until much later.”

“Should I take it back?” I teased her, smiling.

“No, I love it!” We embraced and kissed. She slipped the ring off the teddy bear’s neck and off of the ribbon and onto her shaking finger. She held out her hand and admired the ring.

“I know you wanted the oval cut,” I said, “but I liked the marquise better. But would you like to see the oval cut?”

“No! I love it because you picked it out,” she said.

Then she excitedly showed the ring to my mother, not knowing that my mother already knew. I felt that I had found and secured the most precious treasure for myself and that I had set the course for a happy life—not just for myself but for Vicki, my mother, and both our families. I glanced across the room and saw Vicki signing with my father, the person who had inspired her to learn to sign in the first place.

That evening, we had dinner at my grandparents’ home with Uncle Victor and his wife Aunt Marcella. Uncle Victor offered to call Vicki’s parents in St. Louis to tell them the good news. Her parents were thrilled. Her mother even advised us not to have a long engagement, so we agreed to marry after I graduated from Washington that following August. Based on Jewish tradition, Vicki’s mother said our engagement should be no shorter than four months and no longer than eight months. August would be perfect. I asked Uncle Victor, who was nearing seventy, to be my best man at our wedding, and he gladly accepted. The next day, Vicki wrote a poem about our engagement:

December 28, 1964 (About 3 P.M.)

On Sunday, December twenty-seventh

You told me you made an appointment with

Your Uncle Victor to discuss college plans

And I did not ask you any questions.

On the December twenty-eighth morning

At the breakfast meal you were joking

And I did not know what you planned to do

But I asked you just what you were up to.

You answered with a “why?” and a “nothing.”

So this queer thought of mine was subsiding

You left the table with a permissible excuse

And I continued to tell your mother the news.

You were gone for almost a second hour

And making me miss you all the more

I was sitting in your bedroom in Sioux City

When you returned home finally.

You had a paper bag in your hand

I first asked you how your appointment

With your uncle was and then

You answered with a simple “Oh fine.”

A second later you took out of the bag

A small pink teddy bear stuffed and darling

And I said, “Oh Tracy, you did not

Have to do this,” and from me, a kiss you got.

You told me to look at it again

I did, and I noticed on the ribbon

Around its neck, a beautiful ring was attached

“Tracy, is it real?” I asked.

So unexpected this surprise here

And I thought you bought it at the dime store

You told me to look at it again—I took the ring off the ribbon.

I then realized you were not playing a trick

So I gave you a kiss and a big hug

What a beautiful engagement ring you gave me

You had a wonderful taste in picking out a Marquise.

A few years later, she entered a contest during a Deaf community event where she presented the poem in sign language to an audience and won first prize. And, she still has the pink teddy bear today.