Once upon a time…
…nearly a half-century ago, three DU Fraternity brothers spent a summer at the edge of paradise, playing a softball game called “over-the-line” in the sands at South Mission Beach. The brothers were a carefree bunch boasting comic book names–Bernie Nydam, Keith Maynard Eshelman and Lee Snap Marshall. Their home that summer was the Delta Upsilon Fraternity House, a perfectly placed haven on the campus of San Diego State College. Back in the day, it should be noted, the halls of education on campus were far less crowded than they are today, and the school hadn’t yet lobbied for “university” status.
The brothers with the comic book names decided they needed a real name for their three-man OTL team before entering the 1968 Old Mission Beach Athletic Club’s (OMBAC) OTL Tournament at Mariner’s Point. The three brothers had been in a real quandary about this when Maynard tossed a hunting magazine he’d found in the Chapter’s “penthouse” bedroom onto the dining room table.
“Why don’t we call ourselves Ducks Unlimited?” he suggested, pointing at the magazine. “D-U… Ducks Unlimited,” he repeated. “Get it?”
The acronym proved easy to understand, and while the hunting magazine seemed an odd fit for this laid back crew, there was a logic to it that was unmistakable. Bernie and Snap, the two brothers seated at the table, were quick to come around.
It should be noted that after winning their first OTL game by the slimmest of margins, one player on the losing team (a team, by the way, that had taken home gold the year before–not the chalice, maybe, but certainly some tasteful flatware) was asked by a friend who his team had lost to. Muttering in disgust, the vanquished foe had told his friend that he’d lost to the “Ducks”–an errant comment that had not gone unnoticed by the three brothers, and one they would take home with them that day from the beach.
The tournament, of course, came and went, and while the three brothers didn’t take home any prizes–or even make it to the second day of the tournament–they had come away with something far better than gold. They had come away with a amulet.
To lock in “THE DUCK” as the summer mascot, Brothers Mike Gerson and Tom Darcy had procured a large wooden sign that read: “PLEASE DON’T MOLEST THE DUCKS” from a local park and placed it in the backyard for all to see. Others living in the house that summer were, by now, referring to themselves as “Ducks” as well.
For the next several weeks, the three OTL teammates (Bernie, Maynard & Snap) readied themselves with others in the House for an unlikely journey to Manhattan, Kansas, where the Fraternity’s Annual Leadership Conference was being held. It was about this time that two more brothers with comic book names, Iggy (Chris Baldwin) and Barney (Bob Barney), signed on for the upcoming migration as well. Iggy, it should be noted, would travel first to Michigan before joining his fraternity brothers in Kansas.
Barney’s Volkswagen had been selected by the brothers coming from California, but when the car broke down 70 miles east of Phoenix, Arizona, in the wee hours of the morning, the four brothers quickly discovered they’d need more than ruby slippers if they were ever to make it to Kansas on time.
Having towed the car back into Phoenix later that same day, the four had taken flight the following morning, arriving in Kansas by air. The next five days were filled with a host of memorable moments, and with Iggy now in tow, the brothers with the comic book names ruled the fraternal convention. They dressed differently, for starters, and wore sandals instead of shoes. Their free-spirited style was a welcome reprieve for most in attendance, and in no time at all, brothers from other chapters began flocking around them to mimic their uncommon style. The Convention’s bill-o-fare, it seemed, would never be the same. The Ducks from the Coast (their handle in Kansas) were becoming the quack of the town.
The five brothers returned to the House on Hardy by hook and by crook. Maynard and Bernie waddled off down the highway and hitchhiked home. Snap and Iggy ran afowl with another car engine and were collared in Oklahoma City over Labor Day Weekend, before taking to the air yet again and migrating west. Barney took a lot of flap from his father over the Volkswagen we’d blown up in Arizona, but eventually he, too, made it safely home.
Returnees from the Convention regaled “DUCK” stories to members through the fall and winter of 1968, while the “DUCK SIGN” found in the park was permanently erected in the back yard. In no time at all, there were a half-dozen plaster ducks grazing beneath it. By January 1969, DU had become the “DUCK HOUSE” and that Spring semester, we began calling ourselves “DUCKS” as a matter of habit.
The buzz went National when the DU Fraternity magazine, The DU Quarterly, came out with their 1969 Spring Edition. For years, the National Fraternity had featured a rocking chair bearing a DU insignia on the back cover of their magazine, but this issue boasted a brand new look. For the first time in its history, the magazine featured a DUCK seated in the rocking chair–a DUCK that would remain in that chair for the next 17 years… until Bernie Nydam’s tragic passing in December, 1985.
Without a word from National, the 1986 Spring issue of the DU Quarterly, the one following the sudden loss of our brother, had an empty chair. The DUCK was missing from the seat. It was a haunting sight, as I remember it. No rhyme or reason was given by the National Fraternity for its removal. Some thought it a chilling coincidence, but most assumed that somehow they just knew.
Birds of a feather and all that…
